Scientists breathe a sigh of relief after far-right defeat in French election, but still face uncertainty

Scientists in France have expressed relief that the right-wing National Rally (RN) party was defeated in yesterday’s general elections. However, the lack of a clear winner has raised concerns among scientists, with many not believing that the new government will have a positive impact on scientific research and higher education.

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RN was expected to secure a majority after winning the first round of voting on June 30, with scientists fearing that this could mean cutting research budgets, curbs on immigration and introducing broad climate scepticism into France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly. But the party came a surprising third in yesterday’s second round of voting, behind the leftist New Popular Front (NPF) and the centrist Ensemble — an alliance that included President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party. Neither of the two leading groups won an outright majority and must now negotiate to form a government.

“We have avoided a catastrophe,” says Alain Fischer, president of the French Academy of Sciences. “We can now hope that international scientists will continue to work in France.” But it is not clear whether the outcome is a real victory for researchers, he adds. “We don’t know who will govern, but I don’t expect politics to change much for us. Science and education were absent from the European and French parliamentary election campaigns, and budget constraints mean that research will not be a priority.”

Far Right Concerns

Last month, Macron called early elections for the National Assembly after his party and its allies suffered a heavy defeat in the European Union’s parliamentary elections. Academics have been vocal about the potential consequences of a far-right victory. An editorial in the newspaper The Mondesigned by Nobel Prize winners and hundreds of other scientists, it warned, among other things, about visa restrictions for scientists and students and threats to academic freedom.

“RN has long been a threat to our sector,” says outgoing Research Minister Sylvie Retailleau. “Just look at what happened to higher education and research in Hungary and Poland after the far-right gained power there.” Hungarian universities have become increasingly less autonomous in the past few years.

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The prospect of an RN victory posed “a threat to international cooperation and funding, including control over foundations,” Retailleau added. “Isolation is not an option. We cannot function without the free flow of researchers, students and ideas.”

The RN program assumed a rapid, short-term increase in public spending, which “would have reduced research and other investments. The hardest hit would be the humanities and social sciences, climate science and the energy transition. Several RN politicians are openly climate scepticistic,” says Retailleau.

Cautiously optimistic

Yesterday’s election result eases some of those fears. “The research ministry will probably continue to exist, whereas it would almost certainly disappear if the RN won the election,” says Patrick Lemaire, president of an alliance of French scientific societies and associations.

Lemaire believes science will fare better under the new leadership than it did under the Renaissance party. With the NPF now the largest parliamentary group, the new government could focus more on environmental and energy transitions and support research and higher education better than the previous one, he adds. Lemaire also hopes to use scientific knowledge to inform public policy.

Other researchers are less optimistic. Boris Gralak, secretary general of the French National Union of Scientists (SNCS-FSU), feared a much worse election result, but he still has little hope for French science in the coming years. “Twenty years ago, all the major industrialized countries understood the need to invest in research,” he says. “Germany, the US, China, Japan and Korea have increased spending, but France has not. The impact started to be felt here 10 years ago and unless radical action is taken, the number of publications, researchers and PhD students in France will continue to decline.”

“The new government, which does not obtain a clear majority, will have other short-term priorities.”