Since United States President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, many public institutions have been hit with substantial cuts, including the US research, education, and energy departments, under the impetus of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). The new department’s actions have led to the firing of thousands of federal employees and the cancellation of billions of dollars in grants at agencies supporting scientific research on climate, health, and other fields, prompting Europeans to take action and step up their efforts to attract US researchers to Europe.

Last month, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it would cut spending by $4 billion per year. Meanwhile, about 800 staff members from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which conducts climate and weather research, were also fired, alongside many employees from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. Beyond the federal level, many renowned universities in more than a dozen states raised the alarm about the cuts and announced they would need to limit the number of new students or staff they could take on. For instance, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences recently rejected all students on the waitlist. With growing uncertainty regarding the state of scientific research in the US, many are thus considering moving their research to the European Union, which in turn is intensifying its efforts to welcome them.

Without naming directly the United States, Science Ministers from thirteen EU member states – France, Romania, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Spain, Slovenia, Lithuania, Germany, Greece and Bulgaria – notably addressed a letter to Research Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva calling to welcome “brilliant talents from abroad who might suffer from research interference and ill-motivated and brutal funding cuts.” More precisely, the letter, which reaffirms the EU’s commitment to scientific freedom, recommends exploiting existing tools such as the European Research Council, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), the ERA Talents platform, and the European Universities Alliances to their full potential to this end.

The European institutions are currently expected to prepare a coordinated response on this basis, which will be discussed at the next meeting of EU research ministers, scheduled for 23 May 2025. In addition, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has asked the European Research Council (ERC) to double its funding from €1 to €2 million for principal investigators moving to the EU, in its upcoming call for advanced grants opening in May 2025, and for the future 2026 and 2027 calls.

In the meantime, several universities are already undertaking independent action with the same objectives. At the beginning of March, the French University of Aix-Marseille notably launched its “Safe Place For Science” programme, aiming at securing €15 million and at offering employment to 15 researchers over three years. If nationality is not part of the call’s selection criteria, all candidates must have been based in the US for at least two years, meaning most applicants will have come from there. Another university in France, Paris-Saclay, has announced the deployment of new PhD contracts and that it would fund stays of various lengths for US researchers, alongside its other programmes for international scientists. Similarly, in Belgium, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) recently opened twelve postdoctoral positions for international researchers, who will be granted €2.5 million as part of the MSCA programme.

However, the difficult environment for science across the Atlantic, is also set to have repercussions for European scientists whose work is funded by US grant providers. For instance, researchers at Dutch universities benefitting from federal US grants are now required to fill in a poll to disclose their institution’s compliance with the new US federal policy, meaning the avoidance of topics related to climate change or diversity. Recently, a French researcher traveling to a conference was even denied entry on US soil after a search of his phone revealed messages criticising the Trump administration’s research policy. The situation has sparked significant political pushback from the Democratic Party, while on the Republican front, although some Republican senators from states with large research institutions have expressed doubts, there is substantial alignment with the current administration’s approach.