Since US President Donald Trump’s return to office in January, academic research has seen several cuts that are causing “a lot of concern” and pushing some to consider relocating to Europe.
Trump has gone after Ivy League universities like Harvard and Columbia with threats of cutting several billion dollars in federal funding if they did not drop diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) measures and in Columbia’s case, a perceived failure of addressing antisemitism on its campus.
Trump has also axed research grants from the National Institute of Health (NIH), the nation’s biggest fund for biomedical research, according to NPR.
Some European universities, such as France’s Aix Marseille University, Paris-Saclay and Belgium’s Vrije Universiteit Brussel, are putting aside extra funds for American researchers. But is it enough to entice them to bring their expertise to the EU?
What are researchers looking for?
There is a close professional connection between researchers in the EU and the US, said Reinhilde Veugelers, an economist and professor at the Belgian university KU Leuven.
“We are very closely connected to the US, so we know who are the top people in every field,” she told Euronews Next.
“These kinds of networks that allow [universities] to do that effective screening so that you find the right people and … the best talents”.
There are, nonetheless, some challenges to recruiting researchers to the EU, Veugelers said.
The salary is the major issue for young academics at public universities in Belgium.
Federico Steinberg, an economy and international trade senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, said salary is the main draw for Europeans who previously moved to the US.
“So traditionally you hear people saying that in the US, if you are in your 30s, 40s, the top of your productivity level, there are many more resources in the US,” he said.
“So European academics might be tempted if there are good programmes that can be competitive in offering a good package with career prospects”.
Another factor that they look at is to go where the top researchers are in their field, and, historically, that has been either in the US or UK universities, Veugelers said.
“That means the type of institutions that will be able to recruit, certainly in the short term, will be really the top places in Europe, so the Cambridges, the Oxfords,” she added.
Universities could consider sending their top researchers abroad to those prestigious universities and then “recruit them back” so there is an “indirect access” to the networks at those schools and they stay competitive, Veugelers said.
Is there money to bring researchers to the EU?
One of the main bodies that provides universities with funding for foreign researchers is the European Research Council (ERC), whose mandate is to “encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding".
Veugelers said the ERC grants are “a very good instrument” to encourage American researchers to move because it is “well known” among US academic circles.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, the EU’s minister for start-ups, research, and innovation, announced last month that ERC grants would be doubled to 2 million per researcher after an open letter from 13 governments asked her for a dedicated funding and immigration framework for top talent looking to relocate to the EU in light of the “current international crisis..
Another similar programme is from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, which offers fellowships of up to two years that support foreign researchers in Europe. In February, €354.6 million in grants were awarded to over 1,500 researchers from outside Europe.
But, Veugelers said some of these individual funds should be directed to university offices instead of just individual researchers to help with recruitment.
“I now hear a lot of rhetoric of ‘let’s give them a grant and they will come’ [but] I think it needs more thinking structurally on how we can actually be the best place to attract the best talent,” she said.
The new immigration pathway request sent in the letter to Zaharieva asked her to create a new immigration pathway for researchers coming to Europe. Steinberg believes this could be an incentive to keep Europeans and Americans.
“[Universities] offer five-year contracts, and then after that, what?“So it’s an issue of continuity and career prospects," he said.
Zaharieva told the scientific journal Nature that her office will launch an initiative called Choose Europe later this year that will provide top researchers with a pathway to permanent positions and an accompanying visa strategy.
