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European Union halts scientific cooperation with Russia

The European Commission has decided to halt cooperation with Russian entities in research, science and innovation in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it announced on 4 March.

As a result, the Commission will not conclude any new contracts nor any new agreements with Russian organisations under the European Union’s flagship €95.5 billon research and innovation funding programme, Horizon Europe.

In addition, the Commission is suspending payments to Russian entities under existing contracts.

All ongoing projects, in which Russian research organisations are participating, are being reviewed – both under Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020, the previous EU programme for research and innovation.

Since the Commission’s announcement, the situation in Ukraine has deteriorated further, with Russian troops seizing the country’s largest nuclear power plant, and shelling and bombarding a number of cities.

An attack on values

Margrethe Vestager, executive vice-president for a Europe fit for the Digital Age, said: “EU research cooperation is based on the respect for the freedoms and rights that underpin excellence and innovation. Russia’s heinous military aggression against Ukraine is an attack against those same values. It is therefore time to put an end to our research cooperation with Russia.”

Mariya Gabriel, European commissioner for innovation, research, culture, education and youth, said: “Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine is an attack on freedom, democracy and self-determination, on which cultural expression, academic and scientific freedom, and scientific cooperation are based.

“As a result, we have decided not to engage into further cooperation projects in research and innovation with Russian entities.”

By contrast, she said the Commission is “strongly committed” to ensuring the continued successful participation of Ukraine in Horizon Europe and Euratom (European Atomic Energy Community) Research and Training programmes.

“Ukrainian scientists and researchers have been key participants in our EU Framework programmes for research and innovation for 20 years and have demonstrated excellence and innovation leadership,” she said.

“We have taken administrative steps to ensure that successful Ukrainian beneficiaries can receive funding from the EU research and innovation programmes.”

In a statement on 3 March, Gabriel said she had suspended the preparation of grant agreements for four projects under the Horizon Europe programme that involve five Russian research organisations.

She had also asked officials to suspend any payment to Russian entities under existing contracts.

Mounting pressure

Pressure had been mounting on the European Union to sever science ties with Russia following a coordinated push by the German Ministry of Education and Research and the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany to halt scientific cooperation in response to the invasion of Ukraine, as reported by University World News last week.

After Germany announced that it would freeze cooperation with Russia in higher education and research, German MEP Christian Ehler, who is lead rapporteur to the European Parliament on the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, called on the EU to follow suit.

“I call on the European Commission and Council of the EU to cut off all scientific and research relations with the Russian Federation,” he said in a statement on 25 February, and tweeted: “We need to stand by Ukraine now and defend our European home by all means.”

He said the Russian Federation’s “extreme violation of the most basic human rights calls for a response that employs all means available, even the last resorts the Union has”.

On 2 March the Danish government, in a letter from Minister for Higher Education and Science Jesper Petersen, called on all universities and higher education institutions to suspend all educational, research and innovation cooperation with institutions in Russia and Belarus.

“This will be a clear signal that military aggression results in isolation from the international community,” he said, clarifying that his request applies particularly to cooperation with parties affiliated to Russian and Belarusian state agencies.

He called on institutions that still had students in those two countries to contact them and offer them any help they need, including repatriation.

On 4 March, Dutch “knowledge institutions” – as represented by Universities of the Netherlands, the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Dutch Research Council, the Dutch Federation of University Medical Centres, and The Young Academy – announced that all formal and institutional partnerships in education and research with Russia and Belarus were to be suspended immediately.

This meant that activities encompassed by those partnerships were to cease until further notice and no further financial transactions and no exchanges of data and knowledge could be made.

The decision was taken in response to the urgent appeal of the minister of education, culture and science.

“The Russian military assault on Ukraine has profoundly shocked knowledge institutions in the Netherlands,” a statement on the Dutch Research Council website said. “This is a direct assault on liberty and democracy, which are the fundamental values undergirding academic freedom and cooperation. Dutch knowledge institutions remain fully committed to providing help to Ukrainian students and staff.”

A more nuanced approach

However, the European University Association, which represents more than 850 universities and national rectors’ conferences in 48 European countries, also on 2 March condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine “in the strongest possible terms”, but took a more nuanced approach to suspending research cooperation.

In its statement it said it recognises that many education and research partnerships are based on academic peer-to-peer relationships, and noted that many Russian academics, at great personal peril, have publicly criticised the invasion.

It advised member universities to ensure “on a case-by-case basis that the continuation of existing collaborations” is appropriate at this time, using national and European-level policy guidance where relevant to assess this.

However, it also stressed that the EUA will, for the time being, cease contact and collaboration with any central government agency of the Russian Federation or any other country that actively supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine and called on its members to consider doing likewise.

And it recommended that leaders of EUA member universities and national rectors’ conferences verify and ensure that they “only engage in new collaborations with organisations from Russia where these are clearly based on shared European values”.

‘Legally questionable and the wrong signal’

Speaking as professor of law at KU Leuven, Belgium, and not in his capacity as secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities, Kurt Deketelaere told University World News that the EU decision is “regretful, legally questionable and the wrong signal vis-a-vis the Russian academic community”.

He said: “I am curious as a lawyer: what would be the legal basis for the suspension of these specific contracts if the involved Russian entities deliver as contractually requested by the European Commission? Is this a unilateral breach of contract by the Commission? Not a good signal by the Commission if you ask me.”

Neither the statement of the commissioner, nor the press release of the Commission, give a decent explanation and legal basis for this breach of contract vis-a-vis those specific contractual parties, he argued.

He said this is “regretful”, since the last thing the European Commission (EC) should do is to act like Putin himself, he said.

“The European Commission wants to be the champion of academic diplomacy but this case proves again that other political interests are at the end of the day often more important than academic cooperation, and always lead to direct or indirect sanctioning of the academic world.”

Academic cooperation: the last remaining bridge?

He argued that academic cooperation between universities, between researchers, in research and education, could be the last remaining bridge between the EU and Russia, neighbours which in due course will have to talk again with each other.

“Good academic links could be the perfect vehicle for that. So what is the purpose of the [actions of the] EC (and also of member states)? Disappoint the Russian academic community and drive them towards China? Is this helpful for us? Allow me to doubt that.”

Further, he questioned the behaviour of some governments in the EU.

“As a lawyer, I am just wondering if the German, Danish and Dutch governments ‘ordering’ the freezing or cutting of ties with universities in Russia and Belarus is a violation of the academic freedom and institutional autonomy of German, Danish and Dutch universities?”

He pointed out that academic freedom is embedded in those countries’ constitutions, in the European Treaty on Human Rights, and in the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights, etc.

“Finally,” he asked, “What is the added value of all these symbolic actions at a moment when the EU continues to buy gas and oil from Russia on a daily basis for hundreds of millions of euros, day in day out, during this war – delivered through the network in Ukraine? Crazy and hypocritical, or not?”

Concern for ‘anti-war’ Russian academics

Professor Jan Pamlowski, secretary-general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, told University World News: “I fully understand why the European Commission, along with a growing number of EU member states, has suspended support for scientific cooperation with Russian institutions because many of these are directly controlled by the central government, supporting the war – it would simply be unacceptable to continue to work with institutions like this.

“At the same time, the situation is different for universities. Our universities have a duty, first and foremost, to help Ukrainian staff and students – either those already on the campuses, or those who may join as refugees.

“And I see no desire in any university to collaborate with Russian institutions that support the war in word and deed.

“But there is a strong concern about how we can support those academics in Russia, and those institutions, that have publicly positioned themselves against the war, at considerable risk to themselves. And we must make sure that we do not pull the rug from under their feet.”