“Sacrifice research, and the entire future of our country is compromised.” So proclaimed French presidential candidate Jacques Chirac during this spring's election campaign. If elected, he said, he would launch “a national mobilization plan for research and innovation”, and boost research spending from 2.15% to 3% of GDP by 2010. The thousands of scientific jobs created under the previous government of Lionel Jospin “fell far short of needs”.

But 2010 is a long way away, and reality is biting now. By mid-September, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Chirac's prime minister, must somehow find billions of euros from a sluggish economy to pay for his boss's lavish election promises. As a result, research is set to be sacrificed in the September budget. The finance ministry is reported to have called for steep reductions in public research spending and cuts in research jobs. These have been forcefully resisted by Claudie Haigneré, astronaut and minister for research and new technologies (see page 712). Last weekend, Raffarin promised that the budget would not be cut, but maybe the best Haigneré can hope for is a flat or miserly budget.

She has done the calculations. To reach 3% by 2010, and taking the most optimistic scenario, whereby private-sector spending on research would increase three times faster than the public spend, the former would need to climb by 8.6% every year until the end of the decade, and public spending by 4.2% annually. The government, with the industry ministry in the driving seat, hopes to encourage such incredible growth in research spending, in particular in the life sciences, by subsidies and tax breaks. But by failing to boost the public sector, the government risks a dangerous imbalance.

Seven weeks into her job, Haigneré cannot be blamed for the poor budget prospects looming. Given the political context it is doubtful that any science minister could have won a decent budget. The big question about Haigneré, a political neophyte, is whether in future she will be able to defend research in the ferocious world of politics.

Each new science minister in France faces the same old challenge: transforming a top-heavy, overly complex, slow-moving ship into a nimble craft where money and people can circulate more freely and be concentrated on the best science. In that context, Haigneré may be exactly the kind of minister France needs. Rather than rearranging deck-chairs on a sinking ship — almost all the key science indicators show France lagging behind most of its European neighbours — Haigneré seeks to pursue a productive strategy in which the ministry and the research community identify critical areas where tangible progress can realistically be achieved.

The areas emphasized so far are those needed to transform France's centralized and feudal system from within, by injecting flexibility: freeing up the vital force of young scientists by concentrating resources on giving independence to the brightest minds with the best projects, and seeking to redistribute more funds competitively on the basis of excellence, rather than sharing among existing labs. Haigneré wants to put an end to premature recruitment to full-time posts by creating an interim postdoctoral phase offering attractive conditions to young scientists who must then prove their worth.

Impending research spending will be a far cry from Chirac's pledge of a “historic commitment going beyond anything done in the past”. This will not only compromise France's future, but also make Haigneré's already difficult task of shaking up France's rigid and inflexible science even harder, as there will be no sugar to help swallow the necessary pills.