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Comment by FrojoS | Hacker News Reader

In my experience, EU funding is often used to force research groups across Europe to 'collaborate'. Well at least on paper, since it's so much easier or even required to get funding if you propose 'pooling talent' and other buzz terms.

Just as a sanity check: there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit.

Btw, here in Switzerland the sky didn't fall either after the people voted to 'leave' (the free EU labor market). After all the doomsday talk, Swiss labs can still apply to EU grants. The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs.

Calm down people. Nothing gets eaten as hot as it gets cooked. Its of mutual benefit for almost everyone in Europe to continue free trade with Britain.

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Actually, for Switzerland, Swiss labs cannot apply to all EU research grants now. And I think it's a temporary agreement, which may well be scraped quite soon, if Switzerland really implements the controls on immigration. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/03/eu-swiss-singl... EPFL did not seem and does not seem so happy about the situation.

> The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs.

Switzerland labs are actually performing very well, and get more money from the EU research budget than what Switzerland gives to the EU budget (net gain of CHF 219 millions according to http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/aktuell/medien/00483/00586/index.ht... )

International collaboration is beneficial: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/05/debunking-the-m...

Yes, you can collaborate without a specific grant, but in my experience, it makes the collaboration easier.

I think you painted a very rosy picture of the EU/Switzerland situation when it comes to research, which has nothing to do with the reality.

Here in Germany we have locally funded research, research on the state level, research on the Bundesrepublik level, international research cooperations and EU research. All at the same time. No one forces scientists to 'collaborate'.

> there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit.

Countries in Europe want to see it coordinated and research pooled. Every government does that on a local level for its research budgets. The EU does that on a larger scale. Switzerland is a tiny country. CERN would not exist without outside money and collaborative research.

Living in Switzerland, working in Science. It's been bad, but compensated for now. But soon its going to get worse. The referendum on mass migration results has not been fully implemented, so the EU has only refused to ratify one treaty (H2020).

Once the Swiss government actually implements the anti mass migration and breaks the core of the bilateral, a lot more treaties will go on both sides. This has not happened yet, and you can feel the worry on the political, economic and academic top. The quiet before the storm is almost over. Switserland, was not even part of the single market (customs for goods is still a thing here).

Switzerland also had the advantage of buying an insane amount of euro's and is tightly bound to the success of the eurozone. The UK central bank does not have such a stockpile of euro's and is much weaker in that regards.

Switzerland, is not a good example for the UK.

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