A bit of revamping is probably in order. Scientists are naturally a very mobile group and will usually work wherever the facilities/environment is favorable.

A bit of revamping is probably in order. Scientists are naturally a very mobile group and will usually work wherever the facilities/environment is favorable. Certain pan-European organizations have a very strong reputation, such as The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, link below), and the EU funds the Joint European Torus (link below). These institutes have a very mixed national contingent. So... if the motive of EU funding is to promote transnational collaboration, then the approach they take is needlessly complicated. A simpler possibly solution would be to fund "magnet" institutes (which could be based in existing centers of excellence, or created de novo) that have a requirement to recruit from diverse EU states. http://www.embl.de/ http://www.embl.de/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus