He aims for a “real revolution” for the university. Organization of research, autonomy of establishments… Emmanuel Macron announced his intention to “transform” everything. “I hope that we succeed in transforming our major national research organizations”, such as the CNRS, Inserm or INRAE, “into real program agencies”, which are “strategists” in their field, declared the head of the State during a meeting at the Elysée with several dozen researchers.
The president called for giving more “autonomy” to universities so that they “organize and manage research” at the local level, according to “site logic”. “What I am proposing to them is within eighteen months to open act two of autonomy and move towards true autonomy”, implying “real multi-year contracts” and “governance reformed,” he said.
Towards an act 2 of university autonomy
Act one of autonomy, under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, gave rise to a long standoff. Aware of this pitfall, Emmanuel Macron joked about the fact that his Minister of Higher Education and Research, Sylvie Retailleau, had “forbidden him from pronouncing the word” “status” for staff because changing it would be “all straight away.” “Everyone will get in the way, we won’t be able to do anything,” he agreed. “So I didn’t say that we were going to reform the statutes,” he added, eliciting laughter from the audience of researchers.
After praising the results of the efforts made since his first election in 2017 to put French research back on track after decades of “too significant disinvestment”, Emmanuel Macron recognized that “we have experienced difficult times in recent years”. In this regard, he mentioned the “strange defeat” of the Covid vaccine, France having discovered the principle of messenger RNA but not having been able to develop the remedy.