When I was talking about foreign students, I was talking about universities in the EU attracting foreign students from outside the EU. Quite a few countries in the EU require tuition fees (in some countries is can be quite substantial, like Denmark) for non-EU applicants unless they win a scholarship. Some federal states in Germany have also done the same. Therefore, they are adopting the US neo-liberal market idea of using foreign students as cash cows.
Yes I was already aware about the differences in funding.