In Germany, Austria and other countries, politicians have resigned because of plagiarism in academic papers. According to these standards, the Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel should now also take his hat off. Because his quota is record-breaking: In his thesis written at the University of Nancy, he took over 54 of 56 pages of foreign texts without citing the source. That's 96 percent of all pages. For the former CSU politician Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, the previous leader in Europe, it was “only” 94 percent, albeit in a doctoral thesis. Bettel is about the thesis for his legal studies.

Bettel has been Prime Minister of Luxembourg since 2013. The liberal politician managed the feat of ending a decades-long Christian Socialist supremacy around Jean-Claude Juncker and forging a coalition with socialists and the Greens, which was confirmed in office in 2018. Bettel had previously worked as mayor of Luxembourg City and as a lawyer. He is popular in the country, albeit known for not being a file eater. His “Democratic Party” is not in easy water: Your MEP Monica Semedo has left the party, DP Education Minister Claude Meisch is criticized for a school project with stumbling blocks for Wehrmacht soldiers, the Family Minister Corinne Cahen has to go because of many corona deaths Responsible for old people's homes.Only finance minister Pierre Gramegna would be able to follow Bettel and fill the post of prime minister. Bettel also benefits from internal disputes among the opposition Christian Socialists. A few days ago, the public prosecutor applied for a suspended sentence against its former chairman Frank Engel due to a financial affair. Four other politicians in the party also face fines.

Impressive hodgepodge of copied passages

In this difficult political situation, Bettel chose a forward defense and indirectly admitted the plagiarism.

He stated that he had written his work to the best of his knowledge and belief and that he fully trusted the University of Nancy to assess whether the work in question met the criteria of the time.

If this is not the case, he will of course accept an appropriate decision.

"From today's perspective, I see that it should have been done differently, perhaps should have done it differently," says the politician's statement.

He does not write anything about political consequences.

The opposition MP Sven Clement (Piraten) sees the reference to the university as a diversionary maneuver and calls Bettel a "CopyPastePremier".

The plagiarism was uncovered by the magazine “reporter.lu”. A team led by the journalist Pol Reuter found out that there was not a single correct reference to the source in Bettel's work. The treatise "Vers une réforme possible des modes de scrutin aux élections du Parlement Européen?" Is an impressive hodgepodge of copied passages that does not meet the usual academic requirements. Bettel wrote the text while studying law and political science at the "Université de Nancy II", today "Université de Lorraine". According to “reporter.lu”, the prime minister copied pages from other publications without indicating this in any form by means of comments or footnotes. Among other things, he filled 20 pages from the homepage of the European Parliament,even this without reference to the source, although there is a clearly visible copyright notice there. Reporter.lu referred to a statement by Bettel in an interview with the German ZEIT magazine some time ago. The Prime Minister said: "If I have the feeling that someone is trying to achieve something by trickery, I will not forgive that."