Top EU scientist blasts coronavirus response as he quits
The EU’s most senior scientist resigned in a rage last night, saying he has “lost faith in the system” over the bloc’s coronavirus response.
Mauro Ferrari, an Italian-American scientist who took charge of the European Research Council (ERC) at the start of 2020, left overnight with a 1,000-word take down of the EU’s coronavirus strategy.
Ferrari said his relationship with the EU agency he leads has grown increasingly fraught and pointed to an “internal political thunderstorm” with the European Commission.
“I have been extremely disappointed by the European response to Covid-19,” he said.
Speaking to the Financial Times, he added: “I arrived at the ERC a fervent supporter of the EU. The Covid-19 crisis completely changed my views, though the ideals of international collaboration I continue to support with enthusiasm.”
He said his rift with the EU Commission started in early March as he predicted coronavirus would become “a tragedy of possibly unprecedented proportions”.
Ferrari suggested he initiate a dedicated ERC programme to combat Covid-19 to provide scientists with “resources and opportunities to fight the pandemic”.
But the ERC’s scientific council rejected his proposal on the grounds that the agency’s remit allows it only to fund so-called bottom-up research, rather than top-down ideas where aims are set out by politicians.
“I argued that this was not the time for scientific governance to worry excessively about the subtleties of the distinctions between bottom-up versus top-down research,” Ferrari told the FT.
When he later spoke with EU Commission leader Ursula von der Leyen, he drew up a plan to which the politican made substantial contributions.
“The very fact that I worked directly with her created an internal political thunderstorm,” he said.
“The proposal was passed on to different layers of European Commission administration, where I believe it disintegrated upon impact.”
In his letter published by the FT, he said:
Please forgive me, but I believe that the priority now is to stop the pandemic. The priority is to save possibly millions of lives. It takes precedence over careers, politics, even the beauty of certain science. Please forgive me, but I believe in science at the service of society, especially when it counts the most. And now it does count the most, since it is only through science that Covid-19, and its successor pandemics, will ever be defeated.
A Commission spokesperson confirmed Ferrari’s resignation and expressed thanks for his work.
The Commission is now set to draw up a search committee to find a replacement for him. The spokesperson said around 50 ERC projects were underway to contribute to the EU response to coronavirus.