Are foreign researchers or students coming here to steal knowledge? This fear has been growing in recent years, but the government currently has few options at its disposal to counter such practices.

Sensitive

With this in mind, the previous education minister initiated new legislation to permit screening of non-EU students and researchers. Before they can work or study in the Netherlands, Justis, a service department of the Ministry of Justice, will investigate whether these students and researchers have ulterior motives.

The new education minister Eppo Bruins is currently going ahead with the bill. But as he writes to the House of Representatives, he also wants to tighten up one key aspect: defining which knowledge or programmes count as ‘sensitive’ in order to clarify which foreign students or researchers should and should not be screened. 

The previous minister simply wanted to designate entire subject areas as sensitive but this approach was widely criticised, with organisations including the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences calling for a more detailed appraisal. Bruins is now working to make that happen.

Delay

Identifying risk areas is a vital and complex issue. What makes certain types of knowledge susceptible to spying? And how fast does that change? How many people ultimately need to be screened? Too many and the law becomes hard to enforce; too few and it becomes ineffective. Questions like these also need to be considered by the attorney general, which could cause further delays.

But above all, it’s Justis that needs more time. Due to its full workload, the organisation will not be in a position to screen foreign students and researchers until 2028. Next spring, Bruins hopes to present a bill for public scrutiny and invite widespread feedback. His department gives 2027 as its earliest estimate of when the law can take effect. 

Until then, it remains up to the educational institutions themselves to figure out who gets to access their knowledge – and what knowledge they should have access to. The government established a National Contact Point for Knowledge Security in 2022 to offer support in this area, but it does not advise on individual cases.