Professor Parisi, who will receive his diploma and his check Monday in Rome, himself deplored the underfunding of research in Italy, "a country which is not welcoming for researchers, whether Italian or foreign. ".

"Research is underfunded and the situation has worsened over the past 10-15 years," he lamented on October 8 in front of journalists from the foreign press in Rome.

According to the Italian Institute of Statistics (Istat), 14,000 Italian researchers left the peninsula between 2009 and 2015.

This massive exodus is largely explained by the constant decline in funding for research and universities, which fell from 9.9 billion euros in 2007 to 8.3 billion in 2015. After the 2008 crisis, the Italy has followed a series of austerity plans, and the research budget has been one of the first to pay the price.

As a result, many young Italian researchers, like many of their compatriots, are forced to seek good fortune abroad, such as Eleonora D'Elia, a 35-year-old biology researcher from Rome who has been teaching at the University for four years. prestigious Imperial College London.

"In Italy unfortunately there are very big obstacles to succeed in obtaining a post in the universities. These obstacles are due to the lack of funds, the number of available posts, the connections available and a very complex system based in particular on the number of articles published, "she said in an interview with AFP.

Italy has not always been lagging behind and has been the homeland of great scientists, such as Carlo Rubbia (Nobel in Physics in 1984) or Rita Levi-Montalcini (Nobel in Medicine in 1986), even if the latter have made their mark. most important research abroad.

The Italian Rita Levi Montalcini winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1986 and the French Ambassador to Italy Jean-Marc de La Sablière on December 5, 2008 at the Académie de France in Rome ALBERTO PIZZOLI AFP / Archives

According to Eurostat data, Italy devoted only 1.45% of its GDP to research in 2019, while the EU average is 2.19%, the figure devoted to research. France, far from the 3.17% of Germany.

Like a vegetable garden

A diagnosis confirmed to AFP by Roberto Antonelli, president of the prestigious Lynx Academy in Rome, the oldest scientific academy in Europe, who denounces "the enormous drop in funds devoted to the university and to Italian research organizations" , accompanied by a "lowering of the quality of jobs offered to young people compared to other countries".

This reduction in resources had a strong impact on the number of university staff, where the number of professors and researchers with open-ended contracts fell from 60,882 in 2009 to 48,878 in 2016, or almost -20%.

In London, Eleonora d'Elia has "more support in terms of salary and research budget", while in Italy, where she would "desperately" want to return to find her family and friends, "she should be constantly fight to get this ".

For her, the solution would be "certainly to devote more funds to the university and to research (...) so as to create more positions and opportunities for everyone".

The professor of Roman philology Roberto Antonelli at the Library of the Academy of Lincei and Corsiniana, in Rome on March 30, 2016 ALBERTO PIZZOLI AFP / Archives

In this regard, Professor Roberto Antonelli is delighted that the European mega-plan for post-pandemic recovery, thanks to which Italy will receive 191.5 billion euros in loans and donations over the period 2021-2026, will bring a boost fresh air welcome.

"The problem is the continuity of this funding," he added, "what will happen after 2026 when they stop?"

"In the field of research, continuity is fundamental," he insists.

"The root of the problem lies (...) in the percentage of GDP that each country devotes to research. This ranges from the highest percentages like in Finland, Japan and South Korea, to the lowest in developed countries like Italy, which does not devote funds comparable to those of neighboring countries such as Germany or France ".

An opinion shared by Giorgio Parisi, who illustrates it with this image: "Research is like a vegetable garden, if you think you can water it every two weeks, things will go badly".

© 2021 AFP