“The budget of the NCN should be doubled to approximately 3 billion PLN. This would allow us to fund 25-30% of the proposals we receive, ensuring an optimal success rate as compared to other countries. But for now, we are just asking for another 300 million so as to, hopefully, compensate for this year’s inflation (...)”, Professor Zbigniew Błocki tells Wyborcza.biz
In his conversation with Bolesław Breczko, Professor Błocki added that supporting Polish science to prevent the brain drain of top researchers would serve the interests of the entire country. Without access to large deposits of natural resources, he argued, no country today can achieve high economic growth if it fails to invest in science, research and development.
“Unfortunately, Poland lags behind in this respect in many ways, not just in terms of the proportion of research proposals that get funding, which stands at nearly 50% in countries such as Israel or Switzerland. Even if we increased the success rate to 25%, similar to that recorded in Germany, we would still lag behind, and for or a very simple reason: these 25% of projects get more funding in Germany than they could ever hope for over here. We would love to have a budget of 3 billion PLN, while they have a budget of 3 billion EUR. The budget of the Dutch agency is 2 billion EUR. And yet our researchers are expected to compete on the same field”, said the director.
Prof. Błocki also warned that without the 300 million he requested together with the President of the NCN Council from the Ministry of Education and Science at the beginning of June, „ the NCN will continue to function as usual, but the success rate will continue to drop”.
“However, it is not the future of the NCN that we should be concerned about; it is the future of Polish research, society and our economy, which will bear the full brunt of the neglect of research in Poland. This is not about the NCN, but about the long-term growth of our country and the increasing brain drain of young researchers unable to find prospects for growth here”, summed up Professor Zbigniew Błocki.
The interview was published on 23 June.
Last week, the director also talked about the need for increased research funding at TOK FM radio. “Funding basic research, which is the focus of the NCN, is, to my mind, the main role of the state when it comes to research funding. It’s critically important for the economy”, he said.