French presidential candidate calls on those alarmed by Donald Trump’s rhetoric to relocate to the ‘new land of innovation’

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has called on US scientists, academics and entrepreneurs at odds with Donald Trump’s administration to move to France.

The former economy minister, one of the frontrunners in the upcoming presidential election, urged US-based scientists working on climate change, renewable energy and health issues who were wary of the new political situation to seek refuge across the Atlantic. “I want all those who today embody innovation and excellence in the United States to hear what we say: from now on, from next May, you will have a new homeland – France,” he said on Saturday.

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Rogue Twitter feeds voicing employee concerns at more than a dozen US government agencies have been launched in defiance of what they say are Trump’s attempts to muzzle federal climate change research and other science.

Representing scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, Nasa and other bureaus – either directly or through friends and supporters – the accounts were set up in protest at restrictions since Trump took office on 20 January.

Without naming Trump in his campaign speech in the southeastern city of Lyon, Macron, a former investment banker, said his “solemn call” was intended for all “researchers, academics and companies in the United States fighting obscurantism and who are afraid today” to join the land of innovation he wants France to be.

Macron’s campaign for the Elysée Palace has been given a fillip by a scandal over fake pay embroiling his main rival, the conservative François Fillon, and the nomination of a hard-left candidate to represent the ruling Socialist party.

The 39-year old is now expected to reach the election’s crucial second-round runoff in May and to beat far-right leader Marine Le Pen by a comfortable margin, according to a number of opinion polls published this week.

Macron also made a thinly veiled dig at Trump’s intention to build a wall along the Mexican border, comparing it with France’s Maginot Line, which in 1940 failed to keep Nazi opponents out of France. “I don’t want to build a wall. I can assure you there’s no wall in my programme,” he told about 8,000 cheering supporters. “Can you remember the Maginot Line?”