Lhe report on competitiveness and the future of Europe submitted by Mario Draghi to the European Commission on September 9 had the great merit of calling into question the dogma of budgetary austerity and underlining the importance of research, innovation and training to curb Europe’s economic, scientific and technical decline. However, if this report rightly proposes investing in training, health, thermal insulation of buildings, carbon-free energies or large transport infrastructures, it remains attached to a conception of research and the university struck by obsolescence, based on the economicist belief in a total market of researchers and establishments.
In our context of long economic depression, coupled with the climate, democratic, health and social crises, it is important to take stock of the public policies followed in France for twenty years in terms of training and fundamental and applied research. The research tax credit (CIR) is a tax loophole that allows companies to deduct from their corporate tax 30% of expenses that they show in their balance sheet as originating from “research and development” (R&D). In the absence of serious controls, multiple pharmacies have specialized in disguising generic R&D expenses and commercial executives as researcher-engineers.
If the CIR has a very positive effect for microenterprises and SMEs which employ research engineers to design and produce high technology, it nevertheless has a largely negative effect on the R&D of medium and large companies. Reports from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Court of Auditors or the France Strategy have shown that the CIR is above all a circumvention of European regulations on direct aid to businesses and has no effect either on employment or on investment in R&D.
Accelerated debacle
The indirect effects are in reality much worse, since by depriving public research and universities of funding, the CIR deteriorates the French research and training ecosystem. If companies continue to outsource their R&D to Southeast Asia and, to a lesser extent, to the United States, it is because of the quality of their ecosystem and the degradation of ours. The decline in scientific and technical levels in France is alarming, and the lack of scientific culture among the political class reflects this. The disastrous high school reforms and the absence of an ambitious teacher recruitment and training policy further accelerated the debacle.
You have 58.79% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.