âOnly two pagesâ of Luxembourg PMâs university thesis were not plagiarized
A local news outlet, reporter.lu, said on Wednesday that Bettel had lifted three-quarters of the text, describing it as âan impressive hodgepodge of copied passages that does not meet the customary requirements of academiaâ.
Bettel said he had full confidence in the University of Lorraine in eastern France to assess whether the work met its standards at the time, and that he would ânaturally acceptâ its decision, even if it meant his qualification was withdrawn.
The thesis was written as part of an advanced diploma â roughly the equivalent of a masterâs degree â in public law and political science that Bettel completed at what was then known as the University of Nancy in the same year he entered parliament.
Reporter.lu said the theis, called Toward a Possible Reform of Voting Systems in the European Parliament, contained lengthy passages of text that had been lifted unattributed from two books, four websites and a press article.
It said only âa few paragraphs in the introductionâ and âan equally short conclusionâ had not been copied wholesale, amounting to an exercise in plagiarism âunparalleled in its scopeâ â a verdict that it said had been confirmed by independent experts.
Fully 20 pages of the thesis were lifted straight from the website of the European parliament in defiance of a clear copyright warning, it said, with nine more taken from a 1998 report by a Greek MEP and further passages copied from a standard introductory textbook on the EUâs institutions.
âThe plagiarism I found is very problematic because long passages were transferred almost word for word,â Anna-Lena Högenauer, a political science professor at the University of Luxembourg, told the outlet. âYou canât accidentally copy several pages.â
Nicolas Sauger, a political scientist at Sciences Po in Paris, said Bettelâs thesis was unoriginal and poorly researched, and the plagiarism âtoo extensive to be reasonableâ. But the prime ministerâs former supervisor, Etienne Criqui, said standards were different before the invention of plagiarism-detecting software.
The scandal is the latest plagiarism row to hit a high-profile European politician in recent years, with Germany the worst affected. Germanyâs family minister Franziska Giffey was forced to step down in May over claims she plagiarised her doctoral thesis.
In 2013 Annette Schavan, then the education minister, had to step down after the University of DĂŒsseldorf stripped her of her doctorate, while two years earlier defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned for the same reason.
Bettel, 48, who has been prime minister since 2013, said the thesis was more than 20 years old and written with a clear conscience. But âfrom todayâs standpoint, it could have â yes, maybe should have â been done differentlyâ, he said.
Meet the Original Version of Nina Dobrev… (plagiarized version above)
Nina Dobrev & her impressive camel toe working out in the gym