Greece's attempt to bring top scientists back to the country halted: Program suffers fiasco

Greece's attempt to bring top scientists back to the country after the trauma of the financial crisis has stalled after an ambitious program to reverse the brain drain failed.

A group of professors who had hoped to bring back young researchers through a much-hyped European Union (EU)-funded program now feel betrayed after waiting so long only to learn that the program will not be implemented. They say no one from the government bothered to inform them that the program is dead.

"All this talk about 'brain drain' is no joke, it's a huge step backwards," Aristides Hatzis of the University of Athens told Brussels-based Politico.

"During the financial crisis, money was invested in only one area - research, because the EU gave it priority. Now there is nothing, it is at the very bottom of the priorities," added Hatzis.

An estimated half a million people left the country during the Greek financial crisis, which began in 2008. The economy shrank by a quarter and the unemployment rate reached 28 percent.

Greece has had mass migrations before, including in the decades after World War II, but not so many highly educated and qualified citizens emigrated then.

The ruling conservative New Democracy's "Brain Regain" initiative to reverse the mass exodus of scientists and professionals consists of several schemes, such as a 50 percent income tax exemption for seven years.

Overall, the situation has improved. According to OECD data, since 2021, there has been an increase in the number of people returning to Greece, and in 2023, for the first time since the beginning of the crisis, more people returned than left. In the period 2023-2024, 69.000 citizens left Greece and 98.000 returned.

However, the problem is the scientists, and their dissatisfaction has now been sparked by the Greek government's "Trust in Your Stars" project, an 80 million euro research funding program supported by the EU's COVID-19 recovery fund.

Research teams were invited to submit proposals and 145 were selected from 1.241 applicants. After several appeals, the list of projects eligible for funding was finally published in July last year, and that's when "the knot began to unravel."

More than 200 of those whose projects were not successful expressed concerns about the evaluation process, and some even complained to the European Public Prosecutor's Office.

The Ministry of Development announced earlier this year that around 40 million euros have already been disbursed from the program and that the rest will be disbursed by the end of the program on December 31, 2029.

The complaints only intensified after that, and some of the elected officials sent a formal request to the Ministry of Education asking for details on what the money was spent on when the program had not yet started.

A new problem followed - the "Trust Your Stars" program will no longer receive EU funds because, as the Ministry of Education said, it is not possible to implement it within the framework set in the Resilience and Recovery Fund.

Last month, the finance ministry said it would seek to secure funds "to resolve outstanding financial obligations."

That announcement restored hope that the problem would be resolved, but Hatzis says it was a "legal trick" and that the education ministry has no legal obligation since the contracts were not signed after the initial announcement of accepted proposals.

"What happened violates a fundamental principle that is sacred in states with the rule of law - the legitimate trust of citizens in the state," Hacis said.

"There may not be a contractual obligation, because no contract has been signed, but there are political, moral, even legal obligations," he pointed out.

Petro Bouras-Valianatos from the University of Athens told the Brussels portal that the biggest problem is that the government never met with scientists, nor gave them a reasonable explanation of what happened, so the newly created situation has created even greater problems with the scientific community.

Buras-Valianatos returned to Greece in 2022 from Edinburgh, where he spent 15 years building his career, and says he has no regrets about it, but that the conditions for returning are not good and that many return only for sentimental reasons.

"There is no serious policy by the Greek state to bring scientists back to the country," he told Politico.

According to preliminary statistics, Greece's research spending is declining and in 2025 it will drop to 1,27 billion euros or 0,51 percent of gross domestic product from 1,3 billion in 2024.

"Funding and low salaries are a big issue. An independent body should be established that would allocate money for research and adhere to international standards when it comes to evaluation. We are a small country, we all know each other, so a large number of evaluators should be foreigners," said Buras-Valianatos.