EU is offering what was on the table anyway. EU academia was always more accessible and less competitive than US academia, for obvious reasons. Downside of that is you get to work in environments with a sparser density of talent and accomplishments.
I thought it was the exact opposite. European universities were a lot harder to get a faculty appointment. And they tended to favor local candidates , Which is why you see a lot of US universities have foreign professors, but not as many European universities that do
I was not talking about faculty appointments, but more junior academics. For people at that level I would think it even less likely that they would upend their whole life like this. They are probably married with kids at that point.
What I mean, is that for any international academic who has managed to get into US academia, it was always an option to consider Europe, where funding was always easier to get.
