"Science is the factor which can decide whether Slovenia continues on the path towards successful global nations or, if science collapses, slips towards the world's periphery," the newspaper says in its front-page commentary Science and Tomorrow.

In the last three decades, the external environment as set by politics has rarely been favourable to science, with science rarely placed among political and financial priorities. And when this did happen, it was very easily changed in the next government's term.

Despite this, Slovenia has several centres of scientific excellence, and the Jožef Stefan Institute, which has been led by Jadran Lenarčič since 2005, is one of them.

Now, the science community is expecting a new umbrella law which should make its funding more stable, but it has been hit by some uncertainly about its autonomy.

A "funny idea" envisaging the nationalisation of the assets of public research centres has made its way into the draft bill, which Delo says is bad, because "scientific creativity is also linked to its autonomy".