The sale of a CNRS site to the promoter Vinci disputed

The technical division of the National Institute of Sciences of the Universe of the CNRS, located in Meudon, must be sold by the public research body to the developer Vinci Immobilier, on "order" of the government, for a price "at a discount" of 38,7 million euros instead of the estimated 45 million, according to a press release from the SNTRS-CGT and SNCS-FSU unions.

The places, where dozens of people work on astronomy and Earth science programs, must be released "for March 15 at the latest", continue these unions who see it as "a brutal expulsion".

In six weeks, the site "must move with, among the equipment to be evacuated, machine tools of several tons" necessary in particular for the equipment of telescopes. Research staff will be “isolated from any work collective and even without work for some until the relocation of their service” elsewhere in the Paris region “at the earliest at the end of 2023”, add the SNTRS-CGT and the SNCS-FSU.

"On the scientific level, the work to be carried out within the framework of space programs or ground observation will be delayed", according to these unions which castigate a "profound contempt of the government towards the personnel and the interests of the CNRS and, through them, all public research".

Questioned by AFP, the management of the CNRS said "to work to preserve as much as possible the working conditions of the quarantine of people concerned as well as to limit as much as possible the impact on the scientific and administrative activities concerned".

At a general meeting on Thursday, the staff decided to demonstrate in front of the CNRS headquarters in Paris on February 10, the day when a board of directors on the sale is planned, Josiane Tack of SNTRS-CGT told AFP.