The vast majority of EPFL’s agreements with international partners are aimed at facilitating student mobility. We previously had agreements with institutions in Israel, but these have almost all expired and, for security reasons, we do not currently plan to renew them (it is impossible to send our students there). Nevertheless, we maintain relations with these institutions and allow them, for example, to send a few students to EPFL.

We also have a multilateral institutional agreement (EuroTech) with an Israeli university (Technion). This is an alliance of six European universities that has been in existence for ten years and aims to: 1) exchange best practice, 2) promote exchanges between our communities, 3) increase our visibility, mainly with the European Commission, 4) increase our success rate for research proposals, mainly with the European community. We do not directly fund research activities under this agreement (researchers must obtain their own funding for specific projects).

For these projects, a mechanism is always in place to assess the risk that the research poses in terms of international security and takes into account the origin of the international partner. The projects we run with Israeli institutions (around 20) have therefore already gone through this process and do not contribute to Israel’s war efforts. Given the current geopolitical situation, most European institutions are tightening up these controls, and we are doing the same at EPFL.

These rare contracts are subject to the same type of control as research projects before they are signed.

We do not have an agreement with the Israeli government.