Concern is growing again among researchers at France's publicly financed research institutes about cuts in government support. INSERM, the main agency supporting biomedical research, has just announced that it is freezing 25 per cent of the operating budgets of its laboratories. It will be known at the beginning of April whether the money will be reinstated. At the same time, the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) has demanded the return of all the money held by its laboratories at the end of 1995. The CNRS has been in a critical financial situation for the past two years. It has had to face up to a heavy deficit resulting from the government's failure over several years to provide the funds for programmes it had promised to support.
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