Emmanuel Macron | Jean-Philipe Ksiazek/AFP via Getty Images French presidential hopeful to US scientists: You’re welcome here ‘You now have, and you will have from next May a motherland: France,’ Emmanuel Macron said.

LYON, France — American brains: Welcome to France.

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron today invited U.S. climate and health researchers and businesses feeling gagged under President Donald Trump to cross the Atlantic.

At a campaign meeting, the former economy minister, who is running as an independent, blasted a plan by Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon to tax robots and said that if elected, he would instead give researchers more resources and make regulation more predictable.

“We must be a land of success through innovation,” Macron told more than 8,000 supporters in a gymnasium in the eastern French city of Lyon.

“In fact, I want to make a solemn call to all the researchers, academics, businesses who in the United States are battling obscurantism … fighting to do research on climate, endocrine disruptors, pollution and renewable energies,” he said. “I want everyone defending innovation, excellence in the United States to hear us and see us: You now have, and you will have from next May a motherland: France.”

An opinion poll this week suggested that Macron is most likely to win the upcoming presidential election — the first round of which is scheduled for April 23 and the second May 7 — beating far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen and picking up 65 percent of the vote.