My answer is mostly with respect to CS which I know best, although it does apply to other fields. This is in no way arrogance. France has a history of long-tim

My answer is mostly with respect to CS which I know best, although it does apply to other fields. This is in no way arrogance. France has a history of long-time academics that are totally inactive but take up a faculty line for decades. This means a lot of the research is just well behind the times. On top of it all most of the research gets published in 3rd tier or worse places. Often it gets published in no-name workshops or journals in French. It's so bad a student cannot get a non-pity PhD at MIT by publishing in the venues where most of the papers from EP (and to a somewhat lesser extent INRIA) go to. If you think EP is anywhere like say.. any of the top 10 institutions in the US/Canada/UK you're ignoring the facts. They're even falling behind China now and will in a decade or two be behind institutions in India too if they keep going like this. For example. EP has basically no presence in AI or robotics at any major conference. Most faculty members in EP don't publish 1 paper every year in a reputable conference or journal. INRIA is more international, they suffer somewhat less from these problems. They're also half the size of MIT at best and heavily skewed toward fields that aren't hot anymore.