London
Cnn
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The European Union will spend 500 million euros ($ 567 million) over the next three years “to make Europe a magnet for researchers,” a senior official announced in a veiled response to the Trump administration to funding and changes in scientific policy on Monday.
Speaking alongside Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU executive branch, the French president Emmanuel Macron was more direct, criticizing recent actions by “one of the biggest democracies in the world”, as the cancellation of hundreds of research subsidies and qualifying them as “error”.
The two European leaders spoke during the “Choosing Europe for Science” event at the prestigious University of Sorbonne in Paris.
“Unfortunately, we see today that the role of science in today’s world is questioned. Investment in basic, free and open research is questioned. speechwho has not mentioned the United States.
The comments of Von Der Leyen and Macron follow a series of changes to American scientific policy since Trump’s return to the White House.
For example, the National Science Foundation, a federal agency responsible for advancing discoveries through the scientific spectrum, announced last month that it Cancel hundreds of subsidies For programs that include – without limiting itself – research linked to diversity, equity and inclusion, “the integrity of information from the vaccine” and disinformation and disinformation.
The NSF said On his website, he will cease to finance any search for disinformation which goes against the executive decree of January 20 of Trump on the “restoration of freedom of expression”.
In the meantime, A budget proposal Unveiled by the White House on Friday includes a major reduction in funding for the NSF, the cuts Climate science research and the elimination of an institute focused on nursing research.
“No one could have imagined a few years ago that one of the largest democracies in the world would cancel the research programs simply because the word” diversity “was in the program,” said Macron on Macron on Macron.
“No one could have thought that one of the largest democracies in the world would erase, with a pen of pen, the ability to grant visas to certain researchers,” he continued. “No one could have thought that this great democracy, whose economic model is so strongly based on free science, in innovation and its ability to innovate more than Europeans and to spread this innovation over the past three decades, would make such an error. But we are there. ”
Unlike this evaluation, Von der Leyen said that “open and free” science is the “business card” in Europe. “We have to do our best to maintain it-now more than ever,” she added.
Von der Leyen also said that the European Commission wanted to “consecrate the freedom of scientific research on law” and that EU member states “must” achieve the aim of investing 3% of the gross domestic product in research and development by 2030.