National Overview on Scientific Culture: France. Unpublished report prepared for the PLACES Open Project

Suzanne de Cheveigné (1, 2)

1 EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales
2 CNELIAS - Centre Norbert Elias

France has traditionally been a science and technology-oriented country. Nevertheless, gross domestic expenditure on R&D was only 2.26% of French Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2010. This represents a slight increase compared to the previous year, after several years of slow decrease. This proportion is above the Eurozone average of 2.06% but it is well below the Lisbon target of 3% 1. Research is under the charge of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research (http://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/). Over the past few years, the public research system has undergone deep organisational changes. A programmatic law on research was passed in 2006 2 and in that framework, a High Council for Research and Technology was set up (http://www.hcst.fr/). A number of other counselling bodies for establishing research policy exist in France, including an Academy of Science and an Academy of Technology. Indeed, according to a recent report of the "Cour des Comptes", the control body for all French public institutions 3 , there are too many.

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Suzanne de Cheveigné. National Overview on Scientific Culture: France. Unpublished report prepared for the PLACES Open Project. [Research Report] European Union. Platform for Local Authorities and Citizen Engagement in Science. 2011, pp.10. ⟨hal-02948511⟩