Preventing foreign interference in research and innovation: New toolkit published by the European Commission

A useful toolkit has been developed jointly by the European Commission, EU Member States and R&I partners to help mitigate foreign interference and protect fundamental European values, key research findings and intellectual assets.

In today's globalised world, research and innovation activities expand beyond borders to become more internationalised and to tackle global problems. Accordingly, international networks of academic and technological cooperation play a significant role in creating knowledge as well as innovative outputs. This expansion, however, can lead to several problems with foreign interference, such as technological espionage.

Intellectual property (IP) creation is a continuous process that happens across the entire research project lifecycle. Since it often involves inter-institutional, intersectoral, and international collaboration, IP requires particular protection. This guidebook aims to help researchers and innovators to detect and deal with foreign powers interfering with research or attempting to steal their IP.