Following President Donald Trump’s slashing of research budgets, France has been recruiting scientists from the United States, while climate scientists who arrived in France during the first Trump administration have found opportunities to continue their work. However, some French scientists are questioning the value of spending on foreign recruitment in the face of budget cuts at home.
Within weeks of taking office in January, Trump began cutting health and climate research budgets, and France began asking its own scientific institutions to come up with ways to host scientists from the US.
In March, Research and Higher Education Minister Philippe Baptiste wrote a letter to France’s national research institutions and universities, and the University Aix-Marseille was one of the first to answer the call, committing €15 million to fund three-year research projects for 40 to 50 scientists from the US in a range of fields with its Safe Space for Science programme.
Listen to scientists who came to work in France during the first Trump administration, in the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 128:
“This initiative comes out of a sense of indignation about what is happening in the United States, to offer scientific refuge to American colleagues, whose research is blocked and academic freedom impaired,” Aix-Marseille University president Eric Berton told RFI.
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French President Emmanuel Macron has committed €100 million to attract foreign researchers to France – a way for French institutions to recruit high-level talent, and to draw attention to France's research capacities.
By April, Aix-Marseille had received nearly 300 applications from universities across the US, with 135 of the applicants US citizens 45 dual citizens.
'Make our planet great again'
This is not the first time that France has tried to recruit scientists from the US.
In 2017, after Trump was elected to his first term and pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, Macron launched a programme – called “Make our planet great again" – to encourage climate researchers in the US to come and do their research in France.
The programme drew applicants who were working in the US, but most were foreigners – with Americans not applying in the numbers seen in 2025.
“There wasn't this clear an attack on US climate institutions as we're seeing right now,” one of the grantees, climate researcher Ben Sanderson, told RFI.
Born and educated in the UK, he had been happily working in the US for a decade, but he grew concerned about the Trump administration’s approach to climate research.
“We weren't seeing the closures of entire institutions in the same way that we're seeing now. It didn't seem reasonable to think of yourself as a climate refugee at that point in time.”
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However, because Sanderson was working on climate policy, he felt he would be better off looking for a job elsewhere.
It was easier for him to imagine working in Europe than it was for an American with deeper ties to the US, but even for him and his wife – also a British scientist – the decision to leave was difficult.
“The US is an amazing place to do science,” he said. “It’s a great place to work”
Through the programme, he was recruited to the CNRS, France’s national research centre, and went to work for Sirfax, a research institute in Toulouse.
Academic freedom
Philip Shulz, a physicist working on solar projects, also came to work in France as part of the programme, after spending years in the US.
“The job security that comes with the CNRS position is really remarkable and gives a clear perspective on how you'd like to structure your scientific trajectory and your career. It's a true outlook to perform free research,” he said.
The current recruitment drive comes as France has cut more than €1bn from its research budget as part of a broader attempt to reduce a soaring budget deficit, and French scientists have questioned investing money recruiting foreign scientists when home-grown researchers are feeling the pinch.
Sanderson said he felt a similar pushback from the French scientific community when he arrived in 2018.
“Resources are sparse and therefore it can be perceived as another drain on local resources,” said Shultz, who has stayed in France, running the Photovoltaic institute of Ile de France.
He said he came to build a lab with local talent. “It was always important to underline that this is not a programme just for me, to lure one researcher from the US to France."
Instead, he used the grant “to hire young French researchers to pursue research in France, with me being there to give guidance and counselling”.
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A global effort
Sanderson, who has since moved to an institute in Norway, says that climate research in particular should be considered in broader terms than individual scientists.
“It's important to think about individuals and what they contribute towards climate science, but it's also important to note that climate science is fundamentally this collective effort, and a lot of this is going to land in Europe's hands to continue momentum into providing input to things like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” he said.
Much global climate research still depends on resources in the US, and because not all scientists will want or be able to move, France – and Europe – should focus on other ways to preserve the research, he believes.
“I think any effort of individual countries to be poaching scientists at this point isn't properly thought out," he said.
“A lot of US scientists aren't going want to leave the US, so how do you mobilise some collective European effort to make sure that mission-critical people in the US are able to carry on doing their jobs, which will then be to the benefit of everyone?"
Find more on this story in the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 128, listen here.
