Greece has been working to bring back the highly educated professionals who left the country during its financial crisis, but the failure of a major research funding initiative has left many scientists questioning whether the state can follow through on its commitments.

At the center of the controversy is “Trust your Stars,” an ambitious program set up to fund research teams and scientists at various career stages. Launched under Greece’s Recovery and Resilience Plan, the initiative drew 1,241 funding applications after a call for proposals went out in April 2024. Of those, 145 proposals were eventually selected, building expectations among academics that the program could open doors for young researchers in Greece and draw others back from abroad.

But the process quickly ran into trouble. Researchers voiced concerns about how proposals were being evaluated, and applicants who were turned down challenged the outcome. According to the Greek Education Ministry, 203 prospective beneficiaries had filed formal objections by August 1, 2025.

The program had actually already been dropped from Greece’s Recovery and Resilience Plan through a Council decision approving changes to the plan in July 2025, though the official ruling that revoked its inclusion wasn’t issued until April 2026. In a statement released in May, the ministry confirmed the program’s removal from the Recovery and Resilience Facility and pushed back on claims that €40 million had already been disbursed, saying the project simply couldn’t be finished within the EU facility’s required timeframe.

For scientists who had pinned their hopes on the funding, the fallout goes beyond one canceled program. Aristides Hatzis, a professor at the University of Athens, said the government’s handling of the situation dealt a real blow to efforts aimed at persuading researchers to move back to Greece.

Some academics had planned to use the money to bring young researchers home. Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, an associate professor at the University of Athens, had put together a 25-person team, including scientists based in the UK and Germany, for a project on medicines used in the Byzantine era.

The team hadn’t relocated yet when the funding fell through, which spared them the worst of the disruption. Bouras-Vallianatos, who returned to Greece in 2022 after 15 years in academia in Edinburgh, said plenty of scientists want to come home but that the funding and salary conditions still aren’t good enough to make the move practical. He called for a more independent system for handing out research money.

The setback comes as Greece tries to move past one of the harshest legacies of its financial crisis. Roughly 500,000 people, many of them young and highly educated, left the country during the crisis years in what became known as its “brain drain,” taking scientists, doctors, engineers and other skilled workers with them. In response, the government rolled out a broader “brain regain” push, including tax breaks for returning Greeks and other skilled workers.

The overall numbers have been improving. Citing OECD-linked data, reporting noted that more Greeks returned to the country than left in 2023, with about 98,000 people coming back between 2023 and 2024 against roughly 69,000 who left.

Still, the Trust your Stars episode shows that bringing scientists home takes more than tax breaks or appeals to national pride. It requires steady funding, competitive pay, and proof that government-backed programs will actually last long enough to deliver what they promised. For researchers weighing whether to build a career in Athens, Thessaloniki, or somewhere else entirely, watching an €80 million program unravel after a drawn-out selection process is not exactly reassuring. Greece may be making headway on the broader migration front, but winning back its scientists could prove to be a much tougher task.