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French president Emmanuel Macron made global headlines this summer by calling on foreign scientists to join his climate change initiative, ¡°Make Our Planet Great Again¡±, encouraging US scientists in particular to relocate to France.

But the pitch has not impressed some French academics, who describe it as merely a public relations stunt to boost the president¡¯s image.

The funds for the programme cited by Mr Macron ¡°were already earmarked for future research programmes¡±, Olivier Bern¨¦, an astrophysicist at the National Centre for Scientific Research, said in an interview with France 24.?He suggested that the money ¡°could have been better spent on, for example, universities¡±.

"For us, this is difficult to swallow," Dr Berne said.

Mr Macron¡¯s project was launched in reaction against US president Donald Trump¡¯s decision to pull out of the 2015 Paris accord on global warming, with the added aim of putting France on the map for environmental research.?About 50 research grants worth between €1-1.5 million (?895,000-?1.34 million) were to be made available and by the end of September some 255 scientists from 41 different countries had applied.

rachael.pells@timeshighereducation.com