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Is Austria Leaving CERN ?
By Tommaso Dorigo | May 11th 2009 03:08 PM | 30 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
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About Tommaso Dorigo

I am an experimental particle physicist working with the CMS experiment at CERN and the CDF experiment at Fermilab. In my spare time I play chess, abuse the piano, and aim my dobson telescope at... Full Bio

With an unexpected move, the Austrian Minister of Research and Science, Johannes Hahn, announced last Friday that he intends to put an end to the 50-year-long participation of Austria to CERN.

Such a move is hard to understand, in light of the great prospects of physics that the start-up of LHC will bring at the end of this year. Losing membership to CERN would mean a downgrade of Austrian scientists in all the projects they are involved, and it would be detrimental to the experiments, to the lab, and to particle physics in general, but most of all it would be a catastrophe for Austrian research.

According to HEPHY, the site of the Austrian Institute for High Energy Physics, the termination
would also affect spin-off projects like the planned cancer treatment center MedAustron located in Wiener Neustadt, which is dependent on collaborating with CERN, as well as partnerships with Austrian industries.

The site also points out that


If the Minister's plans will be supported by the austrian parliament, the position of Austria in the World of international science and research will become questionable in the coming years...



Not to mention the fact that a withdrawal of Austria might create the conditions for more such actions by other countries. If you are against such a turn of events, please visit this site, which hosts a petition to prevent the Austrian withdrawal.


Meanwhile, at a meeting held today in Vienna, Minister Hahn discussed the matter with CERN director-general Rolf Heuer, adn with CERN external relations coordinator Felicitas Pauss. The case was made by the CERN staff members that it is in Austria's interests to remain a member of the organization. The matter will be discussed with experts in more detail in the near future, but it is clear that the situation is serious, especially for my Austrian colleagues, whose future is suddenly uncertain. Good luck to them.


Comments

Hello Tommaso,

Thanks for the link. So far, 2800 plus have signed the petition and visitors may also leave remarks at the site. I did find one page that contained a brief bio of the Austrian Minister of Research and Science, Johannes Hahn, for those who might be interested:
http://www.bmwf.gv.at/submenue/english/the_minister/

According to physicsworld.com:
"Austria would only be the third country to leave CERN. Yugoslavia, one of the 12 founding members left in 1961 and never rejoined, while Spain joined in 1961, left in 1969 and then rejoined in 1983."
Obviously, those who detracted have been from opposite sides of the political spectrum. Austria would fall somewhere in the middle. I only mention this because it seems logical to conclude that a form of leverage is operating behind the scenes.

Fred (not verified) | 05/11/09 | 16:58 PM
dorigo's picture
Hi Fred,

I hear that the CERN financing of Austria is 70% of its total research budget. Under such circumstances it will be hard to argue, and the Minister will not change his mind. There are surely political reasons behind the move, but they can be easily hidden behind the argument that Austria cannot afford to continue participating...

Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 04:32 AM
Don't be silly, Tommaso, you surely don't believe this 70% statement - otherwise you would be a person who can't tell the difference between millions and billions. What is actually true is that CERN is 70% of the budget for international scientific memberships of Austria, but it is around 0.2% of the science-and-research-education budget in Austria. The latter amounts to 10 billion euros per year or so, 15% of the Austria budget, and be sure that a significant part of it is research.

Luboš Motl (not verified) | 05/12/09 | 09:56 AM
dorigo's picture
Yes, Lubos, we had already solved this apparent inconsistency (see comments below). I was under the impression that 70% referred to the entire budget of HEP (not of science in general -a freudian slip), but I was explained by Carole that it is instead 70% of the international collaborations budget, as you say.

Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 10:01 AM
Hi,

The numbers quoted are plainly wrong, especially the infamous 70% ! In fact Austria's membership fee amounts to 16 Mio (16*10^6) Euro, which is 0.47% of Austria's budget for science&research. If one adds to this the complete budget of the Institute for High Energy Physics (HEPHY) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, one comes to the often quoted 20 Mio Euro. NB the HEPHY is located in Vienna, it is not a CERN institution!

Anyway, Austria also pays 40 Mio Euro p.a. to EURATOM and about 33 Mio Euro to ESA. So our minister does the math: 20 + 40 + 33 = 93 .... that means CERN gets 70% and the remaining 72.8 Mio Euros are 30%. Isn't it clear?

SK

Sabine (not verified) | 05/12/09 | 14:03 PM
To be blunt, someone should send that moron Hahn's beard for a closer shave.

Anonymous (not verified) | 05/11/09 | 19:36 PM
Maybe the Macedonia situation was part of the motivation for Austria to consider withdrawing from CERN.

According to a portalino.it web article by marcello dated maggio 7
"... CERN ... has invited Macedonia to participate in scientific research and training ... it was a boon for Macedonia to gain all of CERN´s privileges without having to contribute financially. ... CERN ... today numbers 20 member states and collects 751m euros annually in membership fees ...".

Perhaps Austria could, by withdrawing its membership, save its membership fees (maybe 15 to 20 million euros annually) and, like Macedonia, still get benefits.
After all, the USA is NOT a member state of CERN, but a lot of USA physicists spend a lot of time there.

Of course, if many of the 19 other members were to withdraw to get benefits without expense (a la Macedonia), it might be a significant setback for long-term operation of the LHC.

Tony Smith

Tony Smith (not verified) | 05/11/09 | 19:42 PM
dorigo's picture
Tony, if Austria drops off, I would think they will lose most of their benefits. It would not make much sense for CERN to reward such a withdrawal, lest other countries might consider the same move.
Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 04:43 AM
What would this entail for the Austrian scientists? Could they no longer be staff? I am unfamiliar with how CERN is organized.

Brian H (not verified) | 05/11/09 | 20:06 PM
dorigo's picture
Brian, I do not believe that the dropout of Austria could impact staff CERN positions, which are permanent contracts between an institution and an individual (rather than his or her funding agency). For research fellow positions -those that post-docs get- the situation is of course different. I believe that those would indeed be curtailed.

Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 04:39 AM
Its obviously a bad move for them, otoh are they simply re investing the membership fee money or simply scrapping that part of the budget forever?

Haelfix (not verified) | 05/12/09 | 00:43 AM
dorigo's picture
I believe that they want to use that research money otherwise. Maybe to redistribute it via tax cuts ?
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 04:41 AM
My Austrian collegues just invited me to sign their petition, maybe you want to join too:
http://sos.teilchen.at/ (and click on "Öffentliche Petition")
Not that they (ot I) believe it will be any useful, but still...

Marco (not verified) | 05/12/09 | 04:01 AM
dorigo's picture
Hi Marco, indeed, I also linked that site in the post above...
Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 04:12 AM
Tommaso, you say "... CERN financing of Austria is 70% of its total research budget ...", so that CERN is in fact a significant burden on other Austrian research,
and
you also say "... It would not make much sense for CERN to reward such a withdrawal ...".

Then why would CERN reward Macedonia by giving it burden-free benefits?

How do you draw the line between
poor countries that need charity
and
rich countries that must be taxed with fee-payment-requirements,
especially in these financially turbulent times ?

Is this really just one early consequence of global financial collapse, to be followed by many of the remaining 19 as they begin to face financial reality ?

Tony Smith

Tony Smith (not verified) | 05/12/09 | 06:04 AM
dorigo's picture
Hi Tony, I do not know the details of the agreement of CERN with Macedonia. In any case, CERN is financed by EU countries with a fraction of their GNP, so outside countries have their own agreements. The US, for instance, provides support "in kinds" to the experiments.

Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 06:57 AM
It seems to me that Austria is really shooting itself in the foot. First it participates for a decade in the construction of the LHC without getting anything in return, and then quits when it is time to reap the harvest. I could understand if someone would leave in the beginning of the construction cycle, but quitting now seems like a complete waste of money.

Thomas Larsson (not verified) | 05/12/09 | 08:00 AM
It is not true that the amount of money involved is 70% of Austria's science budget.. The amount that Austria pays at the moment for CERN membership is 16 million Euros or 0.48% of this year's science budget. Given this amount of money, and the fact that Austria has been a CERN member since 1959, it simply does not make any sense at all to quit now, especially since the LHC is finally about to turn on.

Carola F. Berger (not verified) | 05/12/09 | 08:03 AM
dorigo's picture
Hi Carola,

where do you get these numbers from ? I had read that the contribution of Austria to CERN was much larger. As for the 70%, I admit I found this somewhere and I did not check whether it was accurate, but probably it refers to the fraction of funds allotted to HEP. Either way, I concur with your conclusions.

Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 08:08 AM
Hi Tommaso,

the 70% are the percentage of the science budget set aside specifically for international collaborations. The rest of the numbers including the current amount of the science budget as well as the 2008 and 2010 figures can be found on the HEPHY webpage (one of Austria's high energy institutes), http://www.hephy.at/cern-at/fragen-antworten/ in German, and here in English: http://www.hephy.at/en/cern-at/fragen-antworten/
Yes, it really only is 0.48% of the science budget.

Hope this clears things up.
Thanks for posting about this issue, the more people know about it and protest and sign the petition, the better.

Carola

Carola F. Berger (not verified) | 05/12/09 | 08:13 AM
dorigo's picture
Yes, Carola. Thanks for the clarification (I thought it was 70% of the HEP budget, but thinking about it of course must be less than that).
Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 10:24 AM
T- ugh, this is the first i heard of this -- and esp. bad in light of the recently found new solder-joint problems that will delay LHC a few months more, most likely (you haven't yet posted about this i think, so i'm not sure you've heard yet..?).

Thx for raising attention on this, i'll sign the petitions..

-M

mandeep gill (not verified) | 05/12/09 | 10:47 AM
T-  just for more info (because i saw your last post on LHC status was a positive one on April 30) -- apparently these new problems were only seen on May 4, they appear to be of a different *kind* than were searched for before, and now other magnets may need to be checked also, and the one cold sector may need to be warmed up too.  i don't know much more, this was told to us by a CMS collaborator who gave a seminar here at Ohio State yesterday.  i'm sure we'll be hearing more very soon.

Will be pretty sucky if this causes more delay..  but i'd still rather have stuff discovered beforehand than the machine have some major other explosion/meltdown that delays this another *year*.

-M

Mandeep Gill | 05/12/09 | 10:57 AM
dorigo's picture
Yes Mandeep, actually I do know about these new LHC problems... These are just rumours for now, and I would prefer to avoid being tagged as a rumour-monger, so let's leave it at that and see what the management will say.

Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 11:07 AM
Tommaso, you really should be more careful. "These are just rumours *for now*" can be easily translated by a tabloid into "CERN scientist acknowledges new problems at the LHC!", and a long speculation on how it will destroy the Earth or something similarly stupid.

Anonymous (not verified) | 05/12/09 | 12:43 PM
dorigo's picture
Anon, let the stupid tabloid reporters show their face then. I am not doing anything wrong by saying these are rumors for now. Besides, speculations on the LHC destroying the world have been quite easily turned into positive advertisement for the science we do there last fall.

I think scientists should become less paranoid about how journalists tweak their stories and their words. We live in a society where media do this for a living, and there is no reason to act or feel different from politicians. I repeat it, these are just rumours, for now. Now please go ask New Scientist to publish a piece and quote me. It will be most funny -they have a record already of misquoting me.

Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/12/09 | 18:12 PM
Hey T-  quite reasonable -- your rumors have a tendency to get way out there, at times, so being a responsible and important member of the worldwide HEP 'public information squad', i can see why you'd want to be a little careful.  :->  and i would have been surprised if you'd heard *nothing* by now, being on CMS as you are!  let's wait and see, then..   -M

Mandeep Gill | 05/12/09 | 13:13 PM
Karrasko's picture
You'll find very interesting the point of view that ZapperZ gives about that new in his blog
Physics and Physicists.  http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.com/2009/05/austrian-physicists-protest-at-cern.html

http://esns.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/ESS_BILBAO

ESS BILBAO | 05/13/09 | 10:32 AM
dorigo's picture
Sorry ESS, but I did not really find that interesting. He is just mentioning the fact, not giving a commentary.

Cheers,
T.

Tommaso Dorigo | 05/13/09 | 11:00 AM
Yes, it's too brief to be highly useful -- though i do like his reply to the uninformed LHC-hater (who is using the CERN-created web to post h/her message, of course....)

Mandeep Gill | 05/13/09 | 11:15 AM

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