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Europe's €500 million lure for US scientists is worth about 0.3% of the grants Washington cut
Europe's €500 million Choose Europe for Science package is about 0.3% of the up to $177 billion in US federal grants cut. US researchers' applications to European programmes number in the hundreds, so the talent employers can count today is a small academic intake.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Grant Witness counts 8,007 NIH, NSF and AHRQ grants frozen or terminated by the Trump administration since 2025.
- The Dutch Tulip Fund, worth €50 million, picked 34 researchers in its first round, and 29 of them came from or worked in the US.
- The federal government lost more than 10,000 STEM PhDs in 2025 through firings, retirements and resignations, according to an analysis of OPM data.
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Why it matters
- decision European companies that want US-trained researchers will have to recruit them directly, because the subsidised schemes on record place arrivals in universities and research institutes.
- exposure A European hiring case built on the exodus depends on Washington: about 65% of the frozen or terminated NIH, NSF and AHRQ grants are already restored, and each further restoration weakens the push to leave.
- contradiction Fortune printed the $177 billion in US cuts as €155 million, which would make Europe's €500 million look larger than the cuts; at Fortune's own exchange rate the cuts come to about €155 billion.
Most of Europe's intake of US scientists can so far be counted only in applications. Aix-Marseille University's Safe Place for Science programme drew a reported 298 before welcoming its first cohort last year [11]. The European Research Council's starting grant drew 169 applications from US-based researchers this year, up from 116 in 2025 [10]. Add the 114 for its senior grant [9] and the three programmes total 581 [5], some of them perhaps the same person applying twice. Against the more than 10,000 STEM PhDs the federal government alone lost in 2025 through firings, retirements and resignations [5], that is roughly one European application for every 17 departures [6].
The money is sized to pick people. Choose Europe for Science, launched in May 2025, is €500 million, or $570 million in Fortune's conversion [8], and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pitched it as a way to make Europe "a magnet for researchers" [19]. Matching US federal grant cuts of as much as $177 billion [3] would take a budget about 310 times that size [9].
Howard Yu, a professor of management and innovation at IMD Business School, said, "European markets and international hubs have a prime opportunity to capitalize on growing uncertainty in the U.S. research environment by maintaining open, welcoming environments where top talent can thrive" [17]. The only corporate figure in the reporting is a stock. European spinouts, companies that grew out of university or research-centre work, have a combined enterprise value of $473 billion, according to Dealroom [14]. Researchers who arrived in the past year have had little time to add to it.
The flow could reverse. Alex Worsham, a US military veteran who moved to Norway this summer to study for a PhD at the University of Oslo [18], said, "If funding is restricted, people will go and seek that elsewhere" [16]. The same logic runs the other way if US agencies restore more of what they cut. Or industry could move. According to data from a STEM recruitment firm cited by Fortune, 28% of American STEM professionals would consider moving abroad if they left their job in the next year [15]. Those moves would show up on European company payrolls, where a hiring number could be counted.
I think the flow stays mostly academic for now, since every count of arrivals in the reporting comes from a public research programme. The counter-case is physics. The rate of US physics PhD graduates leaving the country reached its highest level in 30 years in 2025, according to the American Institute of Physics [6], and the departure rate for non-US citizens doubled from the year before [7]. New PhDs are who companies hire. If that cohort turns up on European payrolls in numbers, this view is wrong.
What to watch
- Whether the European Research Council turns this year's 114 senior-grant and 169 starting-grant applications from US-based researchers into awards.
- The American Institute of Physics's next reading on physics PhD graduates leaving the US, to see whether the 2025 30-year high held.
- Any European company disclosing how many US-trained researchers it has hired, the first corporate figure to set against the academic counts.