15 Apr 2025
EP STOA publishes Academic Freedom Monitor 2024
The European Parliament's Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) has published the 'Academic Freedom Monitor 2024', an analysis of de facto state of academic freedom in the EU, including 10 country overviews (Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Sweden).
The report points out that academic freedom is widely recognised as a fundamental value of contemporary higher education and science, and as a prerequisite for well-functioning democratic societies. However, in recent years, major concerns have been expressed by various stakeholders about the state of academic freedom in the European Union. The European Parliament launched an annual EP Academic Freedom Monitor in 2022, to help improve the promotion and protection of academic freedom in the European Union. The report published on 11 April 2025 presents one of the two studies conducted in the 2024 edition. This study firstly provides an updated overview of recent country- specific measurements of academic freedom across the EU. Secondly, it provides a country-specific analysis of the de facto state of academic freedom in 10 EU Member States. The study was conducted as a qualitative analysis of various data, with input from stakeholder organisations and academic experts. On the basis of both studies, this report proposes EU-level policy options for possible legislative and non-legislative initiatives to support academic freedom in the EU. The results of the study confirm that the state of de facto academic freedom across the EU continues to erode.