The POLITYKA Science Awards winners have called for an increase in the NCN 2025 budget by 300 000 000 zlotys and subsequent increase in its funding. ERC grant winners have earlier voiced their opinions, and a petition has been created to this end.
“NCN-funded projects turned out to be the most powerful tool to support track records and careers of early-stage researchers who could later apply for ERC funding. Many of us could pursue ground-breaking research owing to NCN funding,” the POLITYKA Science Award winners and POLITYKA “Stay with Us!” [Zostańcie z nami!] scholarship grantees wrote in their letter to PM Donald Tuska and Minister of Science Dariusz Wieczorek.
The researchers held that the the work currently underway on the draft 2025 budget bill is the right moment to increase the NCN subsidy and requested that the NCN subsidy be raised by 300 million zlotys in 2025 and continue with increases in the following years.
POLITYKA Science Awards winners' appeal (in Polish)
The letter was sent on 3 October. A few days before that, ERC award winners addressed a similar request to the government officials and Ministry of Science.
The academic community also created a petition addressed to the PM and the Minister of Science, which can be signed by anyone “who understands the need for research in Poland”. The organisers encourage researchers but also representatives of institutions, companies, schools and local governments to sign the petition. Within a few days, it was signed by over 3,200 people.
The petition can also be signed online.
The new draft 2025 budget bill gives the NCN a subsidy of 1.698 billion zlotys, up from 1.643 billion this year but it still does not correspond to the needs of the scientific community.
At the beginning of September, the NCN Council called for an increase in the subsidy for research by 300 million zlotys and subsidy earmarked for the National Science Centre by 2 million zlotys.