ICJ - Interview of René Ricol

René Ricol, Commissioner General for Investment

1- Does the government initiative leave any room for private investment?

For France it would be a splendid achievement to succeed in devoting all our efforts, all our investment to research, i.e. to young people. It would be wonderful to draw on all of this research potential and tie it in with the potential of our companies in order to create wealth and employment.

Yes, of course there is still room for private investment -- precisely because a large amount of our investment relates to the private sector. And beyond the universities, in technological research institutes and laboratories of excellence, we demand that the public money that we allocate is used in tandem with money from the private sector.

The reason we insist on this is that we know that if companies invest, they will want to make sure it is not pointless. So this approach will genuinely create wealth and employment.


2- What do you think of the reform of universities?

An incredible movement is under way. We received 1,400 projects and 400 were chosen. I have been struck by three things:
- The incredible extent to which all the university research teams have got involved has been really impressive.
- The second thing is the quality of the projects that we are seeing, which is so high that the international juries are struggling to chose one over another.
- The third thing is absolutely spectacular, and that is the healthy sporting atmosphere -- the fair play attitude of those who have not won but say 'we'll be back in the second round' because we invest in different cycles. They are effectively saying 'we'll be back for the second round.'

And that, right there, is what is really fantastic about this exceptional field.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• ICJ
• NSB
• 2011