The Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Ministry of Universities have promoted this measure with the aim of providing greater stability to professional careers in public institutions in the field of R&D&I such as universities, research centers, foundations and consortia.
Royal Decree-Law 8/2022, of 5 April, published in the Official State Gazette and coming into force on 6 April, regulates:
- The scientific research contract, within the framework of the Law on Science, Technology and Innovation (LCTI), through the addition of Article 23 bis
- Sanitary controls (COVID-19), which are less exhaustive and are relaxed for international travelers on arrival in Spain (new drafting of art. 1 of RDL 8/2021).
These indefinite employment contracts :
- They shall be aimed at carrying out activities linked to lines of research or scientific-technical services, including the scientific-technical management of these lines, which are defined as a set of knowledge, concerns, products and projects, systematically built around a thematic axis in which activities carried out by one or more research groups converge, and shall require their development following the appropriate methodological guidelines in the form of R&D&I projects
- They may be held with personnel with a degree, engineer, architect, diploma, technical architect, technical engineer, degree, university master’s degree, higher technician or technician, or with research personnel with a doctoral degree, and all selection procedures for employment personnel shall be governed in all cases by means of public calls for applications in which the principles of equality, merit, capacity, publicity and competition are guaranteed
- Recruitment shall not form part of the Public Employment Offer or of the similar instruments for managing staffing needs referred to in article 70 of the Basic Statute of the Public Employee Act. The call for applications shall not be limited by the wage bill of the employment staff. And when the contracts are linked to external financing or financing from calls for public aid in competitive competition in their entirety, they shall not require the prior authorization procedure
- They shall be governed, in all matters not covered by Article 23 bis of the LCTI, by the Basic Statute of the Public Employee and the Workers’ Statute, and the contracted staff shall be entitled to the appropriate compensation upon termination of the employment relationship.
Public universities may benefit from this type of contract (new art. 32 bis LCTI) and by the centers of the National Health System or those linked or subsidized with it and the biomedical research foundations and consortia (new art. 85.5 LCTI).
The RDL establishes the transitional regime applicable to certain types of contracting for the execution of public scientific and technical research or innovation plans and programs.
Inmaculada Pessini
