EXTRAORDINARY ACADEMY ASSEMBLY

Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (AS CR) called Extraordinary Session of the Academic Assembly that took place June 30, 2009 in the Municipal House in Vinohrady. The main topic was to discuss the future of funding science and research in the Czech Republic as it relates to the AS CR. The methodology that the Research and Development Council (RDC), an advisory body to the Government of the Czech Republic, helped to create became the universal tool for distributing money to all of Czech science. On the basis of this methodology, the institutional governmental financial grant for the AS CR would be reduced by about 20 % in 2009 and about 50 % in 2012. The Academic Assembly states that if the proposal of the RDC were actually implemented there would be nonconceptual shifts and abrupt changes in the structure of institutional financing, hence seriously jeopardising the quality of research in the CR. These steps would result in an irreversible loss of scientists and other qualified employees, because neither higher education institutions nor the private sphere could absorb them in the current situation. This would limit the participation of the CR in international cooperation, because without qualified scientists and the corres-pon­ding infrastructure the Czech research workplaces will lose their position as equal partners in international research projects.