It seems that in European universities, taking the authorship away from students is all too common.
My daughter (currently graduating with BA from U. of Cambridge) just completed her research project and while writing her report came up with with a novel interpretation of the results. After her PI and several other people commented on how interesting her interpretation was, she asked if they could publish this work. Her PI suggested a few conferences but said that he cannot support her travel. My daughter has chosen a conference, filled up the paperwork, paid some fees, etc, and then sent an abstract for the PI to review before submission. He returned the abstract with some edits, and also put his graduate student as the first author--which for that particular conference also means the person who would be presenting the work. When my daughter said that she would like to be the one presenting her ideas (not even mentioning the fact that she was the one paying membership and submission fees out of pocket), he said that his lab is too important to allow an undergraduate to present.
I am still trying to find a benign explanation for this, but I'm failing.