A Greek Finance Ministry document points to a possible new funding route for obligations left by the canceled EU-backed “Trust Your Stars” research program, but it does not confirm financing for the 145 proposals provisionally selected for support.
The July 15 document says the Education Ministry should arrange for the project to enter its Sectoral Development Program, within existing budget limits. Its stated purpose is to cover financial obligations arising from commitments, contracts and other legal obligations created while Trust Your Stars remained part of Greece’s Recovery and Resilience Plan. The document does not specify whether the 145 provisionally selected research proposals fall within those obligations, according to a July 30 report by Greek education outlet ESOS.
The development leaves the future of the research program unresolved and adds to questions about the conditions Greece offers scientists considering a return.
Trust Your Stars was not designed as a repatriation program. According to the Education Ministry’s official program page, the program was intended to support research by scientists at different stages of their careers, make better use of Greece’s existing scientific workforce, and create new professional opportunities.
The 2024 funding call carried a total budget of €80.64 million, including €72 million from the Recovery and Resilience Fund. One track supported teams involving postdoctoral researchers and doctoral candidates, with proposals eligible for up to €200,000. A second supported partnerships between researchers at different universities, with funding of up to €1 million per proposal. The official Greece 2.0 call opened in April 2024 and ultimately closed on June 25.
Researchers submitted 1,241 applications. When provisional results were published on July 22, 2025, 57 proposals in the young-researchers track and 88 in the university-partnership track appeared on lists for support, a total of 145. Applicants were still able to challenge their evaluations through the objection process.
By then, the program had run out of time under the Recovery Fund.
The European Commission gave its clearest explanation in July 2026, in response to a parliamentary question from Greek MEP Nikolas Farantouris. The Commission’s response said Greek authorities had requested that Trust Your Stars be removed from the country’s Recovery and Resilience Plan. Greece told Brussels that the unusually large number of applications meant proposals were still being evaluated by external reviewers, leaving too little time to complete the projects within the Recovery Fund timetable.
The Commission added that decisions on whether projects removed from the Recovery Fund should continue with another source of financing rest with the Greek authorities.
The Council decision revising Greece’s recovery plan is dated July 17, 2025, according to the official Greece 2.0 document register. The provisional Trust Your Stars results were published five days later, on July 22.
The evaluation produced a separate dispute. According to the Education Ministry, 203 of the 1,241 applicants submitted objections by August 1, 2025. The ministry has stressed that these were objections within the evaluation process rather than formal legal appeals and says no formal appeal was filed.
Trust Your Stars remained formally within Greece’s Recovery Fund framework until April 28, 2026, when the deputy minister of National Economy and Finance revoked its inclusion following its removal from the revised plan.
The Education Ministry has also rejected reports that approximately €40 million had already been paid through Trust Your Stars. In a May 6 statement, it described reports of €40 million in payments made under the project as “absolutely misleading.”
For researchers whose proposals appeared on the provisional support lists, the cancellation affected teams that were already being planned.
Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, an associate professor of history of science at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, returned to Greece in 2022 after 15 years in Britain, leaving a permanent position at the University of Edinburgh.
His Trust Your Stars proposal involved 21 scientists from Greece and abroad, including five postdoctoral researchers and five doctoral candidates. The project would have linked the University of Athens and the Agricultural University of Athens in interdisciplinary research to identify, digitize and study medicines from the Byzantine period.
Writing about the program in To Vima in May, Bouras-Vallianatos said his proposal had appeared on the provisional successful list and argued that the projects could still be transferred to another funding framework. Looking at about 30 proposals in the university-partnership track involving colleagues he knew, he estimated that they included more than 100 postdoctoral researchers and more than 200 doctoral candidates.
The possibility of another funding route emerged this summer.
The July Finance Ministry document said the Education Ministry should arrange for Trust Your Stars to enter its Sectoral Development Program within its approved budget ceiling. The purpose, as described in the document, is to address outstanding financial obligations tied to commitments, contracts, and other legal obligations from the period when the project remained in the Recovery Fund. It does not say that all 145 provisionally selected proposals will be financed.
As of August 29, no subsequent government announcement has confirmed replacement funding for those proposals.
The uncertainty comes as Greece records a substantial improvement in return migration.
An OECD review published July 3 found that about 46,000 Greek citizens entered Greece in 2023 while roughly 37,000 left. In 2024, almost 52,000 entered and about 32,000 departed.
Those figures cover Greek citizens generally. They should not be read as evidence that 52,000 scientists or other highly skilled workers returned.
The OECD found that returnees are disproportionately young and well educated. In census data analyzed for the report, 47 percent of employed return migrants worked in professional occupations, with health, science and engineering, and information technology among the fields in which they were strongly represented.
For researchers specifically, the picture remains less settled. The OECD found considerable interest among Greek scientists abroad in returning or maintaining professional links with Greece, but identified relatively low salaries, limited research funding, administrative complexity and uncertainty over career paths as continuing obstacles. Its recommendations on diaspora engagement and return call for stronger conditions for research mobility and more sustainable engagement with scientists abroad.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has argued that Greece has reversed the crisis-era brain drain, citing improved migration flows, employment prospects and incentives for Greeks abroad. Eligible people transferring their tax residence to Greece can be exempt from income tax on 50 percent of qualifying Greek employment or business income for seven tax years, under the country’s special returnee tax regime.
Trust Your Stars presents a more specific test for research policy. Greece attracted more than 1,200 applications, completed a competitive evaluation and placed 145 proposals on provisional support lists. But delays left too little time to carry out the program under the Recovery Fund, and the government asked for it to be removed.
A new funding route is now under consideration. Whether it will cover the research proposals that survived the original evaluation remains unresolved.