Italian election: Coalition concern

Research Europe’s Italy correspondent Fabio Turone looks at what the country’s election outcome means for research.

Uncertainty dominates the political scene in Italy after the parliamentary elections of 4 March delivered no clear winner. Among scientists this uncertainty is tinged with worry, fatalism and only a small amount of hope.

After years of cuts to research and education, Italian academics had reason to be cheerful ahead of the election. “In recent months, significant new funding was made available both for basic research and for research infrastructure, after many years of reductions,” said physicist Umberto Dosselli, former director of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare’s Laboratorio Nazionale di Frascati and Italy’s science adviser to the Italian permanent mission at the UN in Geneva.“We will have to see if this positive trend will be confirmed.”