Protection of Academic Freedom: A modern European Scholar’s Republic

This report outlines the emerging trend of proactive legislative and institutional reform to safeguard academic freedom across Europe. After a decade often characterized by the “erosion” of academic autonomy, the years 2024–2026 have marked a shift toward formalizing protections through new national laws, government inquiries, and strategic policy frameworks.

Executive Summary: From Monitoring to Action

The European academic landscape is currently undergoing a “legislative pivot.” While previous years focused on monitoring threats (e.g., through the Academic Freedom Index), current trends show governments and institutions moving toward de jure (legal) safeguards. Germany and Sweden are at the forefront of this movement, utilizing legislative amendments and state inquiries to ensure that researchers can operate free from political and economic pressure. The trend that I identified the first seeds of in my book “Lärande för alla sinnen” (transl. “Learning for all senses”) that was published in 2011, is now becoming a de jure reality. As a modern form of a Scholar’s Republic of the Medieval Age is being formed. 

Focus: Germany’s “Wissenschaftsfreiheitsgesetz” (WissFG)

Germany has taken a decisive step toward modernizing its research environment with the 2026 amendment to the Research Freedom Act (Wissenschaftsfreiheitsgesetz).

Key Reform: Flexibilizing the “Besserstellungsverbot”: A central pillar of the January 21, 2026, announcement is the relaxation of the prohibition on “betterment.” This allows research institutions more flexibility in remunerating scientific employees, enabling them to compete for global talent by offering salaries beyond standard civil service scales.

Strategic Goal: The reform is explicitly tied to the “Hightech Agenda Deutschland.” By reducing bureaucratic hurdles in personnel and budget management, the German government aims to transform the country into a “top technology location” while ensuring that the “freedom of science” (Wissenschaftsfreiheit) remains a practical reality, not just a constitutional theory.

Institutional Autonomy: The amendment empowers institutions to manage their own resources more effectively, shielding them from rigid state-driven administrative constraints that previously hampered innovation.

Focus: Sweden’s Reform to Protect Individual Freedom

Sweden has initiated a comprehensive review of its higher education framework, following reports of growing homogeneity and external pressures in academic environments.

The Government Inquiry (2025–2026): Sweden has appointed a special investigator to analyze the current regulatory framework, with a final report due by June 30, 2026. The goal is to propose legislative changes that specifically strengthen the individual academic freedom of researchers and teachers.

Institutional Pilot (Lund University): Lund University has launched a dedicated project (running through late 2026) to create a “common understanding” of academic freedom. This includes drafting a joint declaration to clarify the university’s role as a space for free inquiry, independent of political and economic factions.

Addressing “Opinion Corridors”: A 2024 investigation by the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) served as the catalyst for these reforms, identifying internal challenges such as “opinion corridors” and standardization that were stifling critical debate.

Comparative Developments in Other European Countries

Other nations are following a similar trajectory, moving toward legal and structural reinforcements of academic rights.

The Netherlands (Towards Constitutional Safeguards): Unlike Germany, the Netherlands does not have academic freedom explicitly protected in its constitution. To address this, the Minister of Education commissioned the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) to produce two advisory reports by Summer 2026. These reports will explore a “robust system of legal safeguards” for both academic freedom and freedom of expression on campuses.

United Kingdom (Workable Freedom of Speech Duties): On August 1, 2025, the UK implemented core provisions of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. The reform was refined in June 2025 to be more “workable,” focusing on new duties for universities to promote academic freedom and the appointment of a “Director for Freedom of Speech” within the regulator (OfS).

Austria (Strategy 2040): Austria has launched the development of the “Austrian Higher Education Strategy 2040.” The advisory body FORWIT is currently conducting a foundational analysis to identify how to improve the legal and financial conditions for researchers, aiming to reverse a decade of slight deterioration in the country’s Academic Freedom Index score.

Norway (2024 Universities Act): Norway’s new Universities and Colleges Act (effective August 1, 2024) codified institutional responsibilities for the learning environment and academic language, providing a modern statutory basis for institutional autonomy.

The Supranational Layer: EU and Council of Europe

The national reforms in Germany and Sweden are mirrored by a broader European push:

The ERA Act: The European Commission is proposing a European Research Area (ERA) Act that aims to embed research security and academic freedom into EU law for the first time.

Council of Europe (Action 2025): The “Academic Freedom in Action” project is working toward a new Committee of Ministers Recommendation to establish a “Clearing House” by 2026–2027 to monitor and respond to violations across member states.

Historical Review

During the Renaissance scholars and students were wandering between the growing number of universities searching for the knowledge and engaging environments of their own choice. As the centuries went by this goal was abandoned in favour of the nations’ demands. Especially from the 19th Century and onwards the main goal was to build a powerful nation-state. In this spirit, the equation of education during the past two centuries has been that the nation has acknowledged different demands and located its educational resources to meet these demands. Now the pendulum is turning. The equation of the 21st Century is returning to the Renaissance. With borderless mobility in higher education in order to empower scholars and students. This is what a research report from the British Council shows. But the borderless mobility now also includes a second dimension, learning and improving skills in the digital world.

Four key trends in higher education, according to the British Council research report

The report “The shape of things to come: higher education global trends and emerging opportunities to 2020” from British Council identifies four key trends in the development of higher education until 2020 and onwards.
1. International student mobility flows in the next decade and the demographic and economic factors impacting on them

2. The emergence of new models of global higher education partnerships – this includes teaching partnerships and provision of degrees off-shore
3. Patterns in research output and its growing internationalisation
4. Commercial research activities that higher education institutions in different countries engage in as a response to decreased investment in higher education across a growing number of countries.

The results show a rapid growth of internationally mobile students. With a rise from 800 000 in the mid-1970s to over 3.5 million in 2009, and it has continued ever since. While the Nobel Prizes have been increasingly won by researchers working in a country other than their country of birth. More than 60 per cent of the winners in the years of 2010 and 2011 had studied or carried out research abroad. It is obvious that new environments give new perspectives and ideas, for the best innovations for the benefits of humans. This is basically also the very essence of what Alfred Nobel meant that the prize should support. And in this spirit also the modern Scholar’s Republic gradually is taking shape.

Erasmus return

In my published collection of short stories called Gränsfarare (Swedish) and Bordertraveller stories (English), unfortunately only in Swedish at the moment), one of the stories is called “The Moth”. Here the reader is meeting Erasmus. The renaissance-man in his correspondence with Martin Luther, the disillusioned revolutionary, and the consequences of the fall of the Renaissance. Today, the spirit of Erasmus has returned. He is lending his name to the European Union (EU) student exchange programmes that was established in 1987. It was about then that the foundation of the new borderless Scholar’s Republic started to be built.

Conclusion: The “New Democratic Pact”

The trend across Europe is moving away from seeing academic freedom as an “internal academic privilege” and toward treating it as a “shared democratic responsibility.” The reforms in Germany (flexibility and attractiveness) and Sweden (individual legal protection) represent a dual-track approach: strengthening the institution’s ability to compete and the individual’s ability to dissent. As these countries report their findings and implement their laws through 2026, they are likely to set a new gold standard for the European Higher Education Area.

Written by
LarsGoran Bostrom©

European trends