Austria will open your universities to the US academics after approveing in Parliament some measures that will facilitate their temporary hiring, amid the growing pressures that teachers and researchers In that country for the policies of the Government of Donald Trump in the university area.
The amendment to the so -called University and Educational Documentation Law was adopted last night for a large majority in the Chamber, with the votes of four of the five parties represented in the Hemicycle, all but the ultra -nationalist FPö, the major of the opposition, the local press reported Tuesday.
In this way, the procedures for the hiring of academics in the United States are simplified, as well as for transnational study programs.
By justifying the measures, the Minister of Science and Research, the Social Democrat Eva-Maria Holzleitner, recalled the “dramatic events” facing US universities, with cuts of their financing and restrictions on international students.
The Trump administration follows a course towards science “short of sight, narrow and dangerous for democracy,” said the minister by highlighting the importance of freedom of science and research for society.
Already in early May, the Austrian government was one of the twelve of the European Union (EU) that asked Brussels to prepare concrete measures to attract researchers Americans.
In response, the European Commission claimed to be working on a new visa strategy that hopes to be able to make known at the end of this year, and has launched a new project to grant higher subsidies and longest hiring periods to high -level researchers who move to Europe.
The European Commissioner for Research and Innovation, Ekaterina Zaharieva, then declared that in the face of “growing skepticism” towards scientific knowledge and attacks on the work of researchers, the EU must be reaffirmed as the “locomotive” that is already in this field, since it welcomes about 25 % of scientists around the world.
