Head of major French university says Europe is solution to continent's scaleup problems

The head of a major French university has said that in today’s complex context, Europe must seize opportunities for its sovereignty by overcoming two major weaknesses: the limited scale of commercialisation of research results into startups and the insufficient availability of long-term, large-scale funding.

El Mouhoub Mouhoud, President of Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) University, member of Udice, the association of 13 French research-intensive universities, gave concluding remarks at the Udice European Forum on 26/03/2026 in Brussels, saying: "We have made progress in transferring research to startups, but this is not sufficient. We have a scale problem. This can only be solved at the European level", he said.

The event focused on the topic "Enhancing Europe's sovereignty: research universities as drivers of open strategic autonomy".

Mouhoud said that research and universities were facing strong political and financial pressures, including growing attacks on science and its funding, which created uncertainty about how to sustain the competitiveness and freedom of research…