Brussels deliberately harms Hungarian students. This is the claim of Culture Minister Balázs Hankó, who sees the Orbán government’s adequate response in the adoption of a legislative amendment on non-profit foundations with public tasks. ‘Our universities and our youth come first for this government.’
Brussels is preventing the universities subject to the model change from participating in the EU Erasmus and Horizon programmes. This is happening despite the fact that Hungary has already fulfilled all the conditions required by Brussels in 2022. The government sent the draft law that has now been submitted to parliament to Brussels eleven months ago, but has not received a response since then. It has therefore now been decided to submit the bill to Parliament in its unchanged form for discussion.
Some things accepted from Brussels
The proposal takes into account that the members of the foundation boards of trustees must be free of conflicts of interest and their mandates are limited to two six-year terms. At the same time, in defence of sovereignty, the government will not accept two changes proposed by the EU Commission. Rectors and local professors are to be excluded from the boards of trustees. However, the minister argued that this would contradict the Hungarian concept of autonomy. On the other hand, international NGOs should determine who is allowed to be a member of the governing bodies of Hungarian universities.
The government had no longer waited for Brussels and had launched the Pannonia programme worth 10 billion forints. The programme will enable 8,000 young people to attend the world’s leading universities. While Erasmus allowed 2,-2,500 students to go abroad for six months at a time, the Pannonia programme enables 3,000 students to study at foreign universities in their first semester. In addition, the HU-rizont programme supports cooperation between Hungarian researchers and excellent international universities.
‘Our model works’
‘The Hungarian model is working, there are more and more foreign students at our universities and more and more young people are choosing training programmes that are particularly important for the local economy.’ Meanwhile, Europe is in a ‘competitiveness pothole’. It is known from the Draghi report that only 4 of the top 50 technology companies are based in the EU. Europe would therefore need a turnaround, as Hungary has shown with its change of model.