Luxembourg's PM to Ask University of Lorraine to Rescind Diploma

Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel has released a statement in which he announced his decision to ask the University of Lorraine to rescind his "Diplôme d'études approfondies" (DEA; degree of in-depth studies).

The news follows claims that the Prime Minister had largely plagiarised a thesis he wrote as part of this degree in 1998.

Prime Minister Xavier Bettel explained that the University of Lorraine had informed him on Monday of its official decision regarding the thesis in question. Putting the work "into the context of accepted citation and drafting instructions within the DEA as practiced more than 20 years ago", the university recognised the thesis as an "original work". This decision also takes into account the fact that the work was a synthesis rather than a thesis, "as was customary and accepted for a DEA at that time".

Nevertheless, Luxembourg's Prime Minister stressed that "it was not [his] intention to mislead anyone at the time". He recognised that whilst he listed his sources in the bibliography, he "did not provide separate text references for individual passages, which can be considered 'a form of plagiarism'".

Despite the decision of the University of Lorraine that he could retain his DEA, provided he adds the missing text references, the Prime Minister stated: "[A]fter careful consideration, I have made the decision for myself to ask the university to rescind my DEA. This is to remove any doubts about the merits of the DEA and to avoid a loss of confidence in the academic work".

He concluded: "I regret this situation and ask the university to accept my apology and my decision".