How will the long-awaited new law make Spanish science more flexible and internationally competitive?
The legislative reform will result in a new Law of Science and Technology that will give more autonomy to public research bodies and reduce bureaucracy. Changes will also be made to other laws that hinder the flexibility and internationalization of Spanish R&D. What sort of changes? For example, it will be simpler to apply for scientific grants. And there will be changes to immigration laws so that foreign researchers can work here more easily. Other modifications will help researchers move between the public and private sectors. We are going to introduce the new law, which has cross-party support, to the House of Representatives in the first semester of 2009. One of the difficulties facing Spanish science is low investment from the private sector. How will the ministry tackle that? At the moment, investment in R&D coming from the private sector is only about 55%, well below the European average. We hope to raise this to 66%. To do this, we must convince Spanish-based businesses, many
