To those who undersigned the letter to Mrs Letizia Moratti

Thank you for reading our letter and supporting it. The aim of this letter was to open a public discussion during the Conference "Brain Drain, Brain Gain: New Challenges" that took place in Paris on June 30th, 2004.

The central debate during this conference was focused on the future strategies of the European Union to create a competitive market for basic and applied research, to counteract the leak of scientists toward the United States and the "waste" of scientists inside the European Union by not making use of their full potential. As a matter of fact, the local policies decided by several National governments are an obstacles to increasing research funds within the Union. Such policies often seem to ignore the goals of the European Commission set forth in Lisbon. Italy, in many respects, is an extreme case of a government of a nation very far from the Lisbon objectives and still not doing much to change the situation.

The Italian Minister for Education, University and Research, Mrs Letizia Moratti, was scheduled to attend the Paris Conference. Therefore we wrote a letter to her to communicate our opinion and concerns based on our experience as Marie Curie Fellows. Unfortunately, without an official reason, she cancelled her participation shortly before the conference. Guido Possa, Italian Vice Minister for Education, University and Research, was supposed to replace her but also did not turn up at the last minute.

Thus the letter was not discussed during the conference. Instead the letter was sent to Mrs. L.Moratti and to the European Research Commissioner P.Busquin.

We also tried, with very limited success, to have the letter published in the major Italian newspapers (none of them appeared to be very open or interested in this issue).

We believe that more than 5,000 signatures in support of our document, obtained in only a few days, are a concrete sign of the urgency of the situation and of the strong desire, of those who do research, that Italy develops a competitive research environment. Our document was also supported by the ADI (Associazione Dottorandi e dottori di Ricerca Italiani).

We want to build further actions on this result. The collection of signatures to the letter goes on and we will try to use them. If you have any comments or suggestions in this respect please contact us directly and stay tuned on the web site of the MCFA for future developments.

14 July 2004,

Nora Brambilla, member of the MCFA Administrative board, science policy panel
Achille Giacometti, MCFA member
Marco Canepari, MCFA member
Tamara Grava, MCFA member