28
Nov
2024
Watch
Foreign interference and espionage by third country actors in European universities (debate)
Mr President, France is subject to foreign interference in the university. In 2021, a report from the Senate fact-finding mission referred to a policy of aggressive Chinese influence in the university. The Senate emphasized the importance of control and prevention mechanisms. Behind a facade of cooperation, China deploys all its influence in order to benefit from our research and development and manipulate the academic integrity of our institutions. This strategy is at the edge of intelligence and influence politics. Behind the reality of academic partnerships between Chinese and European universities are attempts to control European scientific discourse. Exploiting the porosities of our academic systems, other powers, such as Azerbaijan – which also engages in subversive activism in overseas France – Russia or some Gulf states employ similar methods. It is therefore necessary to increase transparency on the extra-European funding of universities and to develop a European ranking of universities respecting academic freedoms, but also to introduce credible sanctions against any interference. The European university must remain a sanctuary of knowledge, open to ideas and innovations from the rest of the world. So let us preserve our universities of dynamics that do not participate in any way in the elevation of knowledge, but constitute games of geostrategic influences that do not say their name.