Vicky Kosta

Universities across Europe are increasingly operating like businesses. Higher education institutions are adopting market-driven behaviours, organising themselves according to corporate management principles, and being steered towards serving politico-economic interests rather than the pursuit of knowledge. This process of commercialisation touches the core of how university education is provided and received, and how academic research is conducted — and may ultimately obstruct science from fulfilling its fundamental function of truth-finding, with far-reaching consequences for society.

EU laws and policies on the European Research Area and the European Education Area have the potential to accelerate this trend across EU member states. Yet they must be measured against the EU’s own constitutional standards, in particular Article 13 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which protects the freedom of the arts and sciences — a standard whose precise content remains incompletely understood.

Vicky Kosta asks what role EU public law plays in relation to this phenomenon. By clarifying the constitutional standard enshrined in Article 13 and examining how EU policy measures up against it, the project sheds new light on one of the most pressing challenges facing European higher education today.