Curbs on immigration resulting from last month's Swiss referendum (see Nature 506, 265; 2014) have led to Switzerland's exclusion from the competition for European Research Council (ERC) grants. This is a devastating blow, given that the country has the highest share of international researchers on ERC grants. Thanks to the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) stepping in to run a temporary parallel programme, however, Swiss science can remain international and competitive.

The SNSF has supported basic science through single-investigator grants for more than 60 years. The new temporary SNSF schemes will help researchers who are working in Switzerland or negotiating with Swiss institutions and who were planning to participate in the ERC competition. The schemes will have similar deadlines, procedures and success rates to the ERC's, and the evaluation panels will comprise distinguished scientists from Switzerland and abroad.

ERC grants represent a sort of 'Champions League' for researchers in Europe, and so it will not be easy to run a local programme of the same calibre. However, Switzerland will now be able to maintain its strong international track record: 49% of our professorial bodies are international, 33% of our researchers are abroad, and 28% of our students are foreigners.