BMFTR Meeting 2026

On Thursday, 05.03.2026, Georg Winkens (IMD-1) visited the federal ministry for research, technology and space (BMFTR) as one of the spokespeople of HAPN. Together with colleagues from Max Planck PostdocNet and Leibniz PostDoc Network, we introduced the three networks to deputy minister Silke Launert.

The main part of the meeting was a discussion with members of the departments for Careers in Academia, the WissZeitVG, but also for International affairs, Universities of Applied Sciences and for the Helmholtz Association. So we not only covered the WissZeitVG, its current flaws and problems as well as possible ways forwards, but also more general topics of concern for PostDocs and other Early Career Researchers in German academia. It was good to see that they had open ears for our concerns and even shared most of our perspectives. The fact that we had almost three hours of meeting instead of the planned two is a good sign that both sides were interested in this exchange.

Let’s hope that this meeting was as productive as we think and that the WissZeitVG will be amended in our favor.

The joint position paper of the three networks with suggestions for changes in the WissZeitVG can be found here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18909861