From the Guardian
EU's most senior scientist resigns over bloc's handling of Covid-19 crisis
Mauro Ferrari condemns EU’s ‘deeply disappointing and disturbing’ reaction to pandemic
Daniel Boffey in Brussels
Wed 8 Apr 2020 12.47 BST
The EU’s most senior scientist has resigned with a passionate denunciation of the bloc’s reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, claiming he has been blocked from funding treatments and vaccines.
Mauro Ferrari, the president of the European Research Council, said he had been “deeply disappointed and disturbed” by the EU’s efforts in reaction to what he described as “a tragedy of possibly unprecedented proportions”.
“In time of emergencies people, and institutions, revert to their deepest nature and reveal their true character,” Ferrari wrote in a damning statement announcing his resignation.
Ferrari, a leading research scientist, who told the Guardian in January that his passion for funding breakthrough-science had been fuelled by the death of his first wife from cancer, had served three months of his four-year term before handing in his letter of resignation to the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on Tuesday.
Ferrari, an Italian, said in his statement that he had joined the ERC believing he could help the funding agency serve “the needs of the world”. He added, however, that his “idealistic motivations were crushed by a very different reality”.
A proposal he had made in early March in Brussels to establish a special programme directed at combating Covid-19 was “unanimously rejected” by the ERC’s governing body, he claimed.
Later attempts to fund the best scientists following discussions with Von der Leyen herself had also “disintegrated upon impact” with the layers of European commission bureaucracy, Ferrari said.
“I believed this [programme] justified by the expected burden of death, suffering, societal transformation, and economic devastation, especially striking the less fortunate, the weakest in the societies of the world,” Ferrari wrote. “I thought that at a time like this, the very best scientists in the world should be provided with resources and opportunities to fight the pandemic, with new drugs, new vaccines, new diagnostic tools, new behavioural dynamic approaches based on science, to replace the oft-improvised intuitions of political leaders.”
Ferrari’s said his initial proposal had been rejected on the grounds that the ERC’s role was to fund from the “bottom up” rather than dictate the areas where scientists should focus.
“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, or whether all scientific sectors would benefit similarly from a broad initiative on Covid-19,” Ferrari wrote. “So, I was clearly disappointed, and deeply disturbed, by the unanimous rejection.”
Ferrari said he had been motivated by the belief “the very best should pick up their best weapons, and go to the frontier, to the frontlines, to defeat this formidable enemy”.
The ERC is the EU’s chief funder of scientists seeking breakthroughs at the very frontiers of our knowledge.
Since its establishment in 2007, it has helped seven researchers win Nobel prizes. Three of its grant recipients were responsible for the first image of a black hole, which made headlines around the world last year.
Ferrari said Von der Leyen had later “personally reached out asking for my input on how the pandemic might be addressed”. But his contact with the commission president had “created an internal political thunderstorm” and his plans came to nothing, he added.
Ferrari wrote that more broadly the EU had failed to live up to its ideals in dealing with coronavirus, with member states failing to offer aid to the countries most impacted, including Italy, when it was needed most.
In the latest development finance ministers failed on Tuesday evening to come to agreement on how they would fund the rebuilding of the European economy, with the richer northern states resisting plans for new instruments that would make borrowing on the financial markets cheaper for the south and more expensive for them.
Ferrari writes: “I have been extremely disappointed by the European response to Covid-19, for what pertains to the complete absence of coordination of health care policies among member states, the recurrent opposition to cohesive financial support initiatives, the pervasive one-sided border closures, and the marginal scale of synergistic scientific initiatives.
“I have lost faith in the system itself. And now the times require decisive, focused, and committed actions – a call to responsibility for all those that have an aspiration to make a difference against this devastating tragedy.”