Through the creation of junior professorships, the French Research Programming Act (LPR) allows young scientists to be recruited on a public law contract with a financial environment that allows them to become tenured university professors or research directors after a maximum period of 6 years. The duration of the contract may not be less than three years and may not exceed six years. The stated aim of these contracts is to offer a new framework to be more attractive to young scientists of a very high level, particularly at international level.
The contractual staff are recruited ‘following calls for research and teaching projects’ launched by the institutions, with a ministerial decree setting ‘each year and for each public institution concerned’ the number of posts likely to be filled by this means and the amount of funding provided by the ANR. The allocation of a Junior Professor Chair to an institution is conditional on the fact that the employment campaign of this institution shows, in the same year, two University Professor positions for a requested Chair.