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posted by janrinok on Monday March 19 2018, @07:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the pay-to-view dept.

Brazil's interim membership in the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has been suspended after the country failed to make the necessary payments:

Brazil's hope of joining the European Southern Observatory (ESO) came to an apparent end this week, as the 15-nation astronomical research consortium announced the suspension of a 7-year-old deal that would have allowed South America's largest country to become its first non-European member state.

In December 2010, with the support of Brazil's then-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the ESO Council approved a plan, known as the Accession Agreement, in which the country pledged to pay €270 million over 10 years for full member status. The deal was approved by the Brazilian Congress in May 2015, but by then the country had new leadership. Neither of the nation's presidents following Lula—Dilma Rousseff or Michel Temer—ratified the agreement and Brazil never made any payments to the consortium. Critics of the agreement, including many politicians and some astronomers in Brazil, thought the original pledge of funding was way above the pay grade of the national science budget, especially as the country's finances worsened.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by esperto123 on Monday March 19 2018, @02:34PM (3 children)

    by esperto123 (4303) on Monday March 19 2018, @02:34PM (#654911)

    I'm brazilian and just commented below.

    Just to give a little more context, in the last few years the country was (and to me still is) in a big economic recession, with the pension system costs skyrocketing, as well as government debt, so investments are just being postponed or cancelled. Not that this debt with ESO would be payed otherwise, because we were supposed to start paying ESO, I think, back in 2010, and at that point in time we were in an economic growth, so, to me this is just how congress and the executive branch always had treated science, as maybe a headline, but with no real investment.

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  • (Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday March 19 2018, @03:04PM (2 children)

    by shrewdsheep (5215) on Monday March 19 2018, @03:04PM (#654934)

    I am surprised that a goverment would ever act like this. The cost in terms of reputation by letting such a contract break are quite high. The goverment could have just cancelled the contract or could have easily negotiated a rebate by showing their cards (or whatever they want to show). Not doing so seems to indicate ignorance of or indifference to foreign relations. But which is it?

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by esperto123 on Monday March 19 2018, @04:02PM (1 child)

      by esperto123 (4303) on Monday March 19 2018, @04:02PM (#654960)

      If I would guess, by the attitudes of recent governments, it is both.

      I can give you a couple of examples (to contextualize, for the past decade or so we are in a big political crisis, with several politicians and businessman being jailed, which never happened before, and pretty much every single high ranking politician in the country is being investigated for corruption in one form or another, including the president):
      - last year happened a big and important international meeting, I think it was Davos or a G20, with several heads of states, about one week before it started the current president decided not go to take care of the political crisis he is in, cancelled all meetings scheduled to happen, the international affairs office (freely translating here) warned that it was a really bad idea to do this as this was very important for foreign relations and could have an economic impact, so he decided to go, but it took a few days and by the time tried to get in contact again with the people he cancelled on they had moved on and scheduled other meetings instead, so he pretty much went there for nothing.
      - The previous president (which was impeached) in the last couple years of government did almost no international visits or received international heads of state, mainly because she was dealing with the internal political crisis and international relations were an after thought.
      - Israel has public called us a diplomatic dwarf when we tried to initiate talks between them and the Palestinians.

      We have a GDP in the order of 2 trillion dollars, which almost 6 times as large as Israel and one of the top 10 in the world, how the 8th biggest economy in the world can be considered internationally a diplomatic dwarf? it is gross negligence.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @07:34PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @07:34PM (#655075)

        you ain't got enough nukes, or you did not look pro Israel enough, probably.