Freedom of research and security in the present geopolitical context: legal, ethical, and institutional frameworks for European universities and research bodies

This paper examines the growing tension between academic freedom and security governance within the European Union, arguing that the EU’s expanding regulatory infrastructure—spanning the AI Act, the Dual-Use Export Control Regulation, the NIS2 Directive, the GDPR, and the 2024 Council Recommendation on Research Security—is reconfiguring the institutional authority, accountability structures, and operational autonomy of European universities and public research bodies. As geopolitical competition intensifies in fields involving artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology, research institutions are caught between competing governance mandates: their foundational commitment to open science and international collaboration on the one hand, and an increasingly layered architecture of security-oriented obligations concerning third-country partnerships, classified information, and dual-use knowledge flows on the other. Engaging with the research security literature and with the plurality of securitisation logics identified in critical security studies, the paper argues that EU research security does not operate through the exceptional, state-centred logic described by the Copenhagen School, but predominantly through routine and precautionary logics enacted by bureaucrats, funders, security professionals and academics themselves, within a constitutional framework that subjects security measures to proportionality and judicial review. Drawing on the European Research Area framework, the European Economic Security Strategy, and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the paper maps this emerging governance landscape—including the open science and data acquis with which security instruments interact—and identifies the key institutional dilemmas it creates. It then proposes a principles-based governance framework that universities and research bodies may adopt to navigate these competing demands while preserving their role as autonomous environments of knowledge production within a democratic polity. The paper contributes to the politics of technology literature by analysing how security imperatives are reshaping the governance of European research institutions and by proposing institutional design principles that balance openness, accountability, and security in the present geopolitical context.