Europe makes a pitch to attract scientists shunned by the U.S.

PARIS – As the Trump administration slashes support to research institutions and threatens to freeze federal funding to universities such as Harvard and Columbia, European leaders are offering help to U.S.-based researchers and hoping to benefit from what they are calling a “gigantic miscalculation.”

“Nobody could imagine a few years ago that one of the great democracies of the world would eliminate research programs on the pretext that the word ‘diversity’ appeared in its program,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said Monday.

He was speaking at the Sorbonne University in Paris during the Choose Europe for Science event organized by France and the EU.

It was unthinkable, Macron said, alluding to the withdrawal of researchers’ visas in the U.S., that a nation whose “economy depends so heavily on free science” would “commit such an error.”

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, announced an investment of 500 million euros ($566 million) at the conference to “make Europe a magnet for researchers” over two years.

Although that amount is not much compared with the billions in cuts American universities face, it comes on top of the $105 billion international research program called Horizon Europe that supports scientific breakthroughs, like genome sequencing and mRNA vaccines, von der Leyen said.

She did not mention the United States by name, but she described a global environment where “fundamental, free and open research is questioned.”

“What a gigantic miscalculation!” she said.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, plans to double grants for researchers who relocate and to enshrine freedom of scientific research into law called the European Research Area Act.

The Trump administration’s attack on science and threats to universities were the main impetus for the conference, which was attended by government ministers and prominent researchers from across Europe.

France announced its own program to lure U.S.-based researchers last month. The government promised universities and research institutions in the country up to 50% of the funding needed to lure international researchers. On Monday, Macron said his government would commit $113 million to the program.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.