ROMA – The minister Cristina Messa the first issue on the table, as large as 108 institutes located throughout Italy, did not address it: the National Research Council, the most important and largest scientific institute in the country, 8,600 employees, an annual budget of one billion euros, neither has a president nor is he looking for him. And since February 14th, Massimo Inguscio’s day of decadence, he has been deprived of two of the five expected members. Yesterday evening the three remaining representatives chose a “deputy” to avoid paralysis – it is the rector Lucio D’Alessandro -, but the anomaly remains whole.
The minister of University and Research had written to Republic, last February 16, which would have addressed the issue as a priority, trying to resolve it within a week. For now, he has only appointed a member of the Board of Directors to replace the lawyer Gabriele Fava, proposed by Confindustria but in conflict of interest as a member of the Presidency Council of the Court of Auditors. He resigned. Nicoletta Amodio, the newly designated by the association of entrepreneurs, is however a direct employee of Confindustria: she deals with technology transfer. The relationships and contracts of the CNR, also with the organization of Viale dell’Astronomia, suggest its incompatibility. The member Lucio D’Alessandro, rector of the Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples, did not appear at the first board meeting following the Inguscio presidency, he is now vice president. The third member of the Board of Directors in office is the employee representative, Nicola Fantini.
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The point is that politics, which can appoint four out of five representatives of a scientific body, does not choose and, above all, disregards the work done by an external commission that had put the best of Italian science on the plate. In order, the natural candidates for the presidency are: Andrea Lenzi, professor of endocrinology at the Sapienza University of Rome and president of the Biosafety Committee of Palazzo Chigi (for the CNR he reported an evaluation of 100 points out of 100); Francesco Sette, physicist of matter and general manager of the European synchrotron research facility in Grenoble; Vincenzo Barone, chemist, former director of the Normale di Pisa; Cristina Messa herself, former vice president of Cnr and now, in fact, minister of the University and Research; finally Tommaso Edoardo Frosini, full professor of Constitutional Law at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples, vice president of the Cnr just expired. Cristina Messa, active rector of the Bicocca University of Milan, close to both Forza Italia and the former president of the CNR, the engineer Luigi Nicolais (in turn a man of weight from the Federico II University of Naples, from which the outgoing minister comes Gaetano Manfredi, both from the Pd area), was the favorite candidate for the new National Research Council. Then came – for her – the call in the Draghi government.
If politics does not choose, thinking it can govern CNR by not choosing, science is boiling. The outgoing member Vito Mocella, a researcher from Naples, presented a warning to the minister reminding her that twelve months after the opening of the selection “there are no consequent acts”, that the inactivity of successive ministers brings with it potential damages and criminal liability and that in the face of non-compliance of the government it is necessary to proceed to the commissioner of the institution. “The main road remains the appointment of the president, identifying him from the five chosen ones from the Search committee. “We are talking, in fact, of the external commission that carried out the work of evaluating the curriculum and managerial skills of the candidates.
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The April petition “for an immediate renewal of the presidency and the board of directors” was signed by almost six hundred researchers from the CNR. Today on the Everyday occurrence A new letter from 260 employees has appeared asking for “compliance with the Constitution and the guidelines of the European Charter for Researchers”. As a query by Paola Binetti, Senator of Forza Italia, “in a delicate phase like the one the country is going through, research activity is a sector of primary interest”.
The chemist Vincenzo Barone, rector of the Normale di Pisa who came out after an opposition by the League to a settlement of his high school in Naples, is the third in the ranking drawn up by the commission. He says: “I note that there is ministerial dissatisfaction with the candidates. It is the second time that I am not taken into consideration despite having top scores”. He adds: “I am worried both about the flattening of science on medicine and the lack of attention to basic research”. Even the physicist Francesco Sette, now resident in Grenoble, joined the CNR five for the second time in a row: both, in the previous appointment, were overtaken by Massimo Inguscio, fourth, welcomed as president by the then prime minister Matteo Renzi. The endocrinologist Andrea Lenzi limits himself to saying: “It does not seem appropriate to me to comment on the choices that others have to make”.
Between February 2020 and February 2021, the Ministry of University and Research tried twice to challenge the choice of the last five, but the State Attorney’s Office rejected the attempts. The hypothesis now is to scroll the ranking up to sixth place, occupied by Corrado Spinella, director of the Department of Physical Sciences and Matter Technology of the National Research Council, an intern. There would be a ministerial approval for Roberto Battiston, professor of experimental physics, former president of the Italian space agency (removed by the former Northern League minister Marco Bussetti) and Pd candidate for the last European Championships. Battiston, however, is in 12th place, tied with six others.
In the meantime, the Minister of Mass has renewed or confirmed the presidencies of the research institutes Ingv, Area Science Park Trieste and Inrim.
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