EUROPE’S BRAIN DRAIN:

Three years ago, E.U. leaders vowed to make the union “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” by 2010. But one of the most worrying signs of their failure is the continued drain of Europe’s best and brightest scientific brains, who finish their degrees and pursue careers in the U.S. Some 400,000 European science and technology graduates now live in the U.S. and thousands more leave each year. A survey released in November by the European Commission found that only 13% of European science professionals working abroad currently intend to return home. . . .

But complaints like those of Claude Allègre, the former French Education Minister who heads the Paris VII geochemical lab, are all too common. He decries France’s anachronistic “Soviet” system, in which control is centralized and researchers must run a bureaucratic obstacle course, whether to buy expensive equipment or order basic office supplies. “I’m planning on moving to the U.S. indefinitely because I want to continue my research,” says Allègre. “I can’t do so in the current conditions.”

Interesting story. Will this sort of thing cause the Eurocrats to lighten up?