The problem is systemic - in European post-socialist countries, education is based mostly on rote learning which becomes more and more pointless in a modern world. Example on the bottom.
Students cope with that by cheating, which allows them to concentrate their time on actually useful aspects. Most teachers, except the dullest ones, tolerate that. In other words, the whole system sort-of works only because of cheating! As it's so accepted rote learning is irritating, but mostly harmless.
There's a fine boundary where cheating stops being beneficial - crib notes are great, making someone else solve problems for you, or having pre-made answers is not. That actually should be punished.
Punishing all forms of cheating is going to be incredibly damaging, because it means the best scoring students are going to be those best at memorization.
Wouldn't it be better to remove rote learning instead? Obviously, but I'm afraid that's not realistic. Harshly punishing cheating now is going to achieve the opposite: today's top rote learners become tomorrow's professors and teachers. Not only did they get great scores, but they presumably feel good in a rote-learning system.
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What do I mean by rote learning? Memorize these numbers [0] to the third decimal place. Not a joke - it's a real example, albeit exceptional in its absurdity.
