After the rally

As mentioned earlier, of the two urgent demands of the meeting - amendments to the law on public procurement, allowing funds received under grants and government contracts to be spent without holding competitions, and a significant increase in funding from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Russian Humanitarian Fund - noticeable success has so far been achieved only in the first case. The bill laying motionless in the Duma until mid-October, providing for the introduction of appropriate changes to the law on public procurement, “came to life” after the meeting: already on October 18, a new version of the draft was submitted to the Duma, on November 1 it was adopted in the first reading, on November 16 - in the second , and on November 21, the Duma adopted the corresponding bill in the third reading. Thus, after the bill is approved by the Federation Council and signed by the president—there is no doubt that this will happen in the coming weeks—it will become law, which will make life much easier for scientists.

Unfortunately, there is no progress on the issue of increasing the budget of scientific funds. In mid-October - early November, meetings between the organizers of the rally and representatives of three parliamentary political parties represented in the State Duma took place: the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, A Just Russia and United Russia. The first two parties fully supported the demands of the rally and proposed corresponding amendments to the law on the federal budget, providing for an increase in funding for funds; later they announced support for the demands of scientists and the Liberal Democratic Party.

Oleg Morozov, first deputy chairman of the State Duma, representing United Russia, also agreed with the reasonableness of the scientists’ proposals and promised to work on the issue with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education and Science. He was given a draft amendment to the budget law, providing for an increase in funding for the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Russian Humanitarian Fund by financing a number of federal target programs. The explanatory note to the draft amendments provided the rationale for the validity of such redistribution. In particular, it was stated there that an analysis of the results of competitions held within the framework of the Federal Target Program for research and development showed that after the launch of a line of large three-year technological projects in priority areas in 2011, within the framework of block 2 of this Federal Target Program (“Technology Development”) will remain unclaimed about 5 billion rubles, and the volume of unclaimed funds for 2012 is at least 4.5 billion rubles.

At a government meeting held on November 10, the relevant departments did not support the amendments to the budget law proposed by scientists. The Ministry of Finance opposed it, motivating its position as follows: the proposed redistribution of funds from the Federal Target Program in favor of the Russian Federal Property Fund is inappropriate due to the importance of the projects being implemented within the framework of the Federal Target Program. Thus, the obvious limitations of the ability of government organizations and business structures to increase the volume of large-scale technological work and applied developments were ignored. Another argument against increasing the budget of scientific funds was the results of an audit by the Prosecutor General’s Office, which was reported in the previous issue of TrV-Nauka. The Ministry of Education and Science did not show any activity in discussing this issue; as a result, the position of the Ministry of Finance became the position of the government.

The official statement of the position of the Ministry of Education and Science was given in response to an appeal from the trade union of RAS workers dated November 2, 2011. Deputy Minister Sergei Mazurenko once again confirmed that the Ministry of Education and Science is in favor of increasing funding from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Russian Foundation for Humanities. However - someday later, in working order: “... in accordance with clause 14 of section II of the Minutes of the meeting of the Government Commission on budgetary projections for the next financial year and planning period dated September 12, 2011, the Ministry of Finance of Russia, the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia were entrusted with the results of execution federal budget for the first quarter of 2012 to consider the issue of additional financing from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.” Ministerial officials apparently do not understand the specifics of the work of scientific funds: if, within the framework of federal target programs supervised by the Ministry of Education and Science, it is possible to cut a new series of lots in the middle of the year without any problems, then the volumes of financing for most new and ongoing RFBR projects are determined at the beginning of the year.

All attempts by the organizers of the rally to somehow influence the situation: a press conference held at the Independent Press Center on November 14, picketing of the State Duma on the morning of November 18 (on the day of consideration of the bill on the federal budget for 2012 and the planning period of 2013 and 2014 in second reading) - were not crowned with success: as one would expect, United Russia sided with the government during the voting.

Thus, in the adopted budget law for 2012, funding from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Russian Humanitarian Fund will be maintained at the current level - 6 billion rubles. and 1 billion rubles, respectively. And it will be necessary to continue pressure on the authorities in order to achieve increased funding from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Russian Humanitarian Fund. In principle, even a possible increase in the budget of funds in 2012 - if there is reasonableness in the actions of the government, which, of course, is difficult to guarantee - can be carried out in such a way that funding for initiative projects is increased. To do this, it is necessary to stipulate in amendments to the budget that 90% of additional funding should be directed to a proportional increase in funding for initiative projects. The main thing is that such amendments to the budget are not made at the end of the year.

Evgeniy Onishchenko