Good news today. Yesterday afternoon Werner Faymann, the Austrian Federal Chancellor, announced that Austria will not leave CERN, as previously suggested. An official confirmation of this decision will be received this afternoon by letter by the President of the CERN Council.
The decision of Austria does not surprise me - it would have been both crazy and self-destructive for Austrians to decide to leave the rich program of particle physics that they have contributed heavily to make a reality.
The LHC, most notably, will start producing knowledge of a totally new energy frontier next year, and Austria will share the merits of any new discovery. Had they pulled out now, a big problem would have been created for its citizens who are currently employed at CERN to do research there. CERN would then have had to decide whether to discontinue those contracts: a typical case of "damned if you do, and damned if you don't", because keeping those contracts alive would have been a signal of the advantage of pulling off to other european countries that might be reconsidering their participation.
