The European Union is offering a “super grant” valued at $566 million to U.S. scientific researchers.
The grant, which will be offered between 2025 and 2027, comes as the Trump administration has cut more than 380 domestic grant programs in the last month. Trump justified the cuts by saying they violated his executive order, which prohibited funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion directives.
French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen discussed the grant at the “Choose Europe for Science” event in Paris.
“A few years ago, no one would have imagined that one of the biggest democracies in the world would cancel research programs under the pretext that the word diversity was in this program,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. “No one would have thought that one of the biggest democracies in the world would delete with a stroke the ability of one researcher or another to obtain visas,” Macron said, but here we are.”
The European Union is also seeking to pass legislation that would “enshrine freedom of scientific research into law” in an effort to protect against “threats” that have plagued the scientific community in recent times. This comes as the Trump administration condemned a report that a French researcher was denied entry over political messages on his phone. The Department of Homeland Security said the researcher was denied because of confidential information on their phone.
“We can all agree that science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity, no political party,” von der Leyen said. “We believe that diversity is an asset of humanity and the lifeblood of science. It is one of the most valuable global assets and it must be protected.”
NIH DEBATES MISSION AND STRUCTURE AS TRUMP SHAKE-UP LOOMS
Meanwhile, in his 2026 fiscal budget plan, President Donald Trump has proposed 40% in funding cuts to the National Institute of Health which he accused of having “grown too big and unfocused.”
“NIH has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health,” Trump’s proposal stated.