By Sara Cincurova, Edit Inotai, Tim Gosling and Claudia Ciobanu – Reporting Democracy*
Bratislava, Budapest, Prague, Warsaw. The Hungarian government said it was unaware that the EU’s threat to cut off funds to Hungary would also affect its universities’ access to financing from the Erasmus+, a highly popular European exchange program for students and teachers. The PM’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, told a press conference Thursday that the government considers the decision unacceptable, yet it wants a quick solution. This could even include removing politicians from the boards of the controversial private trusts that now run 21 universities in Hungary.
The university funding model is a shrewd invention of the Fidesz government, which essentially saw public assets of universities transferred to private foundations, which were subsequently supervised largely by Fidesz ministers or politicians who earn an extra 1 million forints a month for their trouble. The EU Commission indicated on December 15 that it finds it incompatible with transparency that political leaders sit on the boards of these trusts and decide about public money going to an organisation where they are also employed. The suspension is only temporary and could be solved by some legislative changes. The opposition Democratic Coalition has already filed a motion to forbid active politicians from sitting on these boards. Gulyas said that if there is no agreement with the EU Commission, the government would be willing to finance the exchange programs in 2024, but will consider taking the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union if necessary. Minister of Regional Development Tibor Navracsics – who is a member of one of these boards – will travel to Brussels next week to address the issue. In the meantime, students of various universities complained that Erasmus offered their only real chance to study abroad. In 2020, more than 20,000 Hungarians – students, teachers and researchers – participated in the Erasmus+ program, which was funded with 40 million euros by the EU, the daily Nepszava, which broke the story, wrote.
Elsewhere, the Hungarian human rights organisation Helsinki Committee managed to hold up the expulsion of Yevgeny Beliakov, an LGBT activist and critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime, who could face prison or sent to the war on return to Russia, by appealing the decision of Hungary’s National Directorate-General for Aliens Policing (formerly, the Immigration Authority) not to extend his residence permit, Telex.hu reported. The Metropolitan Court ruled that the National Directorate-General failed to take into account the “changed reality” in Russia, i.e., the invasion of Ukraine. Yet the case is not closed, and Beliakov’s fate remains in limbo. The political activist first came to Hungary in 2008 to study at the Central European University (CEU), which was at the time – in Beliakov’s words – regarded by the Russian security agencies as a “centre that trains agents with the task of disrupting Russia”. He also claimed the FSB tried to recruit him as an agent, but he turned them down. Instead, he finished a Master’s degree at CEU and later worked at several human rights organisations throughout Europe as well as, briefly, for Novaya Gazeta, a critical paper in Hungary which no longer exists. When he returned to Hungary in 2017, he received a residence permit that expired in 2022, which the Hungarian authorities have now refused to extend, claiming he showed up late with the necessary documents.
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*Reporting Democracy is run by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, a non-profit network promoting free speech, human rights and democratic values in Southern and Eastern Europe and beyond. The programme is supported by ERSTE Foundation, a creative workshop for ideas and innovation where critical journalism and free media are seen as crucial elements of functioning democracies.