The erosion of US leadership in academia presents Europe with a rare opportunity: the chance to attract top researchers from the US to continue – but also to narrow Europe’s innovation gap.
With the Trump administration threatening university funding and academic freedom, the European Union has a rare opportunity to attract top researchers from the United States —protecting strategic research and narrowing Europe’s innovation gap.
The Trump administration’s budget cuts and political interference risk dismantling critical research efforts in fields such as climate science, social sciences, and medicine. Rather than standing by, Europe should take decisive action to offer top researchers currently based in the U.S. a stable academic home where they can continue their work unimpeded. This would preserve invaluable research and help address Europe’s longstanding innovation gap.
The US currently dominates global higher education. The Times Higher Educational’s World University Rankings lists eight US universities among the ten in the world. Looking beyond the overall rankings and specifically at innovation, patenting is a key indicator of successful knowledge transfer. Only two European universities are among the world’s top 50 patent applicants, compared to 18 from both the US and China. Our own research shows that just 8% of European patents come from universities and other higher education institutions. Moreover, European university patenting is highly concentrated geographically, with the majority coming from just five Western European countries — the UK, Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland. Without a stronger research sector, Europe risks falling further behind in strategic technologies when now it is more important than ever to become a knowledge leader.
How to attract top US research to Europe
To seize this opportunity, Europe must act decisively by extending and targeting European funding initiatives to researchers based in the US. The EU’s Horizon Europe programme should be opened up to US-based researchers as associated but funded partners, with additional funding made available for this purpose. Similarly, the European Research Council and Marie Curie funding programmes should be specifically targeted at the US, emphasising their potential to attract top researchers to the EU. To ensure long-term success, stable funding sources and prospects for sustained support must be guaranteed, making Europe an increasingly attractive destination for research talent.
Beyond individual recruitment, European institutions should seek partnerships with US universities facing funding instability. Joint ventures could bridge the transatlantic academic divide and enhance Europe’s research performance. In addition, the creation of satellite campuses and research collaborations would further strengthen knowledge exchange and foster long-term academic ties between Europe and the US.
This approach is about more than competitiveness – it is about safeguarding scientific progress and building strategic innovation at a time when knowledge leadership is more important than ever for the EU. By taking a proactive stance, Europe can become a global research leader and protect knowledge from political interference. If the US no longer provides a stable home for top researchers, Europe must step in. With the US proving an unreliable and unwilling partner, Europe is rightly racing to strengthen its defence, industry and infrastructure. But to ensure a lasting transformation, it must match this urgency in innovation and knowledge transfer. This is a strategic moment that will shape the future of research and innovation for decades to come.
Opinion piece by Aleksandra Parteka based on her and her team’s research on knowledge creation by higher education institutions, including the working paper “A dataset on knowledge creation and patenting by European Higher Education Institutions (KC-HEI)”.
