EU Cuts Funding for 21 Hungarian Universities

A Euro­pean news por­tal is report­ing that over 30 high­er edu­ca­tion and cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions in Hun­gary, includ­ing 21 uni­ver­si­ties, have been cut off from EU fund­ing over ongo­ing con­cerns about rule of law breach­es in the country.

More than 30 high­er edu­ca­tion and cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions in Hun­gary, includ­ing 21 uni­ver­si­ties, have been cut off from Hori­zon Europe and Eras­mus fund­ing over ongo­ing con­cerns about rule of law breach­es in the coun­try. The sus­pen­sion, under the EU’s con­di­tion­al­i­ty reg­u­la­tion, was con­firmed to Science|Business by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion on Mon­day. It affects insti­tu­tions oper­at­ed as ‘pub­lic trust foun­da­tions’ or main­tained by such foun­da­tions. Since 2021, the Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment has brought 34 insti­tu­tions under the con­trol of these funds, whose gov­ern­ing bod­ies con­tain mem­bers close­ly linked to the country’s prime min­is­ter, Vik­tor Orbán, and his polit­i­cal par­ty Fidesz, accord­ing to the human rights organ­i­sa­tion the Hun­gar­i­an Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee. One exam­ple is the Uni­ver­si­ty of Miskolc in north east Hun­gary, which is under a trust whose chair­woman is Judit Var­ga, the country’s min­is­ter of jus­tice. Around 80% of uni­ver­si­ties in Hun­gary are now linked to a pub­lic trust fund. The cre­ation of these pub­lic trust foun­da­tions is part of a series of steps tak­en by Orbán over the last decade to con­trol knowl­edge and infor­ma­tion in the coun­try. These have includ­ed the cre­ation of an umbrel­la foun­da­tion in charge of over 500 media out­lets and the trans­fer of many of the country’s major research insti­tutes to a state linked network.

Read the rest here.

A Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report on the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive alliance explained the role of the Hun­gar­i­an edu­ca­tion­al facil­i­ty­known as the Math­ias Corv­i­nus Col­legium, in the Orbán gov­ern­men­t’s strug­gle to con­trol Hun­gar­i­an high­er edu­ca­tion and to cre­ate a plat­form for rightwing figures.

The MATHIAS CORVINUS COLLEGIUM, a Hun­gar­i­an edu­ca­tion­al facil­i­ty, is a key part of the ORBÁN government’s strug­gle to con­trol Hun­gar­i­an high­er edu­ca­tion and is the cen­ter of Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive activ­i­ty in the coun­try. This facil­i­ty, fund­ed by a mas­sive gift of stock from the ORBÁN gov­ern­ment, has spon­sored events and teach­ing posi­tions for promi­nent US right-wing fig­ures. Rus­sia has already begun to employ Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive themes in its influ­ence oper­a­tions which will like­ly find a more recep­tive West­ern audi­ence than in the past. Hun­gary is par­tic­u­lar­ly fer­tile ground for Russ­ian exploita­tion of Nation­al Con­ser­vatism giv­en the exist­ing close rela­tion­ship between Russ­ian and Hun­gar­i­an elites and an exten­sive pre-exist­ing Russ­ian influ­ence network.

Read the full report here

Athough not men­tioned in the above cit­ed arti­cle in the list of Uni­ver­si­ties affect­ed by the EU deci­sion, GIOR has no doubt that it played a role. GIOR report­ed in Novem­ber on the open­ing of the MCC Brus­sels office.

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Ara­bic	Hebrew	Pol­ish
Bul­gar­i­an	Hin­di	Por­tuguese
Cata­lan	Hmong Daw	Roman­ian
Chi­nese Simplified	Hun­gar­i­an	Russ­ian
Chi­nese Traditional	Indone­sian	Slo­vak
Czech	Ital­ian	Sloven­ian
Dan­ish	Japan­ese	Span­ish
Dutch	Klin­gon	Swedish
Eng­lish	Kore­an	Thai
Eston­ian	Lat­vian	Turk­ish
Finnish	Lithuan­ian	Ukrain­ian
French	Malay	Urdu
Ger­man	Mal­tese	Viet­namese
Greek	Nor­we­gian	Welsh
Hait­ian Creole	Per­sian

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