Orbán election defeat brings hope Hungary’s Horizon Europe ban will be lifted

Hungarian academics are hopeful that an EU ruling banning 30 institutions, including 21 universities, from Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ will finally be lifted with the election of a new government. 

Péter Magyar and his Tisza Party romped to victory in parliamentary elections on April 12, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year spell as prime minister. 

Under Orbán and his Fidesz party, many academic and scientific institutions were restructured and made into special public trust foundations, with board members strongly linked to the government given lifelong mandates and significant decision-making powers with little oversight. The EU deemed that this undermined academic freedom and transparency, leading to a ban in 2022. 

Magyar’s victory has brought fresh hope to Hungary’s academic community that this issue can finally be resolved. 

Eszter Lakos, an MEP and member of the Tisza party, said the large margin of victory that has given the new government a two-thirds majority in parliament makes it possible to change the model for these institutions. 

“We want to get rid of this model and reestablish the autonomy of universities,” she told Science|Business. “We want to again be in the blood circulation of European research and innovation, and have our students go across the EU to study,” she added.

Hungarian academics have welcomed the election results.

“Now, in Hungary, everybody is happy,” said Dániel Deák, former professor of international taxation and EU law at Corvinus University of Budapest. “The prime minister-elect has already spoken about restoring academic freedom. Importantly, the EU's transparency milestones should be met. I am sure they will be met,” he added. 

József Pálinkás, a nuclear physicist and former education minister and president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, called the election result “a great development in Hungary.”

He said he is optimistic that Tisza will work to change the governance structures of the public trust foundation institutions and the Hungarian Research Network (Hun-Ren), adding he’d prefer a new law on higher education rather than just amendments. 

Hungary’s research network was taken out from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2019 and turned into a quasi-private network, with similarities in its governance to the public trust foundations. 

It is expected that the European Commission will not lift the ban on Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ participation until its concerns over the transparency and academic independence of the Hungarian institutions are resolved. 

Changing the model

It is not uncommon in Europe for politicians to serve on university boards of trustees. Similarly, the idea of foundation-led universities has been tried elsewhere, notably in Germany.

What sets Hungary’s model apart is the privileged nature of the public trust foundation boards, which, compared to counterparts in other countries, have huge powers in setting the universities’ strategies, managing their assets and controlling their finances. The members of the boards were exclusively appointed by the Hungarian government with lifelong mandates and, after one year, the power to appoint new members was handed exclusively to the boards of trustees themselves. 

From a legal perspective, it remains unclear how Tisza will change this structure. 

“I am not an advisor to Tisza, but I think it would be faster to ask the members of the boards of the universities and that of the Hun-Ren to resign, and after to ask the EU to open the possibility for these institutions to participate in Horizon Europe and Erasmus+,” Pálinkás said.

“If there is no interim solution, it will take at least half a year to do all the legal procedures,” he went on. “I think that show of good intent from the side of the Hungarian institutions and the board members and flexibility from the Commission would help a lot to speed up the process. The Hungarian institutions are really in need of joining these programmes.”

Viktor Olivér Lőrincz, president of the Hungarian Academy Staff Forum, a civil initiative formed to defend academic freedom and researchers' rights, said it was possible the new government would come to an informal agreement with the current board members. 

“Part of the reason these boards were set up in the first place was the government wanted to use this institutional autonomy to protect its allies in case they lost the 2022 election,” he said. “It didn’t happen then, of course, but now it has and the collapse is so huge that I don’t think these people affiliated with the government will try to hold onto their positions.”

Impact on Hungarian researchers and academics

The three-and-a-half years locked out of Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ has been difficult for Hungary’s entire academic and research community. 

The Fidesz government set up substitutes for the affected institutions to try to compensate. The Pannónia Scholarship Programme offered international mobility possibilities for university students and staff, in a similar way to Erasmus+, while the HU-rizon Programme supported research efforts and collaboration, like Horizon Europe. 

But for Lőrincz, these programmes couldn’t make up for the loss of European collaborations. “It was presented [by the Fidesz government] as if it was only a question of money. But the EU programmes were also a framework, and created partnerships between universities,” he said. 

Hungary joined the EU in 2004 and so the affected institutions had less than 20 years to integrate into European research and education programmes. “Now it is more or less lost,” Lőrincz said. 

Even the universities and institutions that remained public and were not transformed into trust foundations were impacted. “The loss of trust and loss of reputation meant that [European] partners didn't want to collaborate even with the public universities,” he said.

“Beside the concrete loss of money, the ban was also a clear message to [both] European and Hungarian universities that the Hungarian universities are not anymore part of this community,” he added.

Tisza’s R&D plans

Tisza’s manifesto is clear about its plans to restore academic freedom and to develop Hungary’s research and innovation landscape. It has, for example, committed to preparing a new, transparent law to restore the independence of Hungary’s Academy of Science and state research institutes, and also to restore academic freedom. 

“Higher education today faces numerous challenges. Institutional governance has become opaque, the autonomy of universities has weakened and the system of financing and quality assurance does not sufficiently support excellence and international competitiveness,” the party programme states. 

There are several other commitments to promoting science, research and start-ups. The party is aiming to increase Hungary’s research spending from around 1.3% of GDP to 2% in the medium term, and to 3% in the longer term, bringing it in line with European expectations. 

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Tisza also wants to provide stable core funding for institutes and introduce a simpler and faster grant system with short evaluation periods and predictable calls.

In terms of innovation, the party is aiming to strengthen cooperation between universities, research institutes and businesses, and to encourage the creation of innovation ecosystems and technology transfer centres. 

“I think that the main ideas in the programme are very good,” Lőrincz said, while noting that Fidesz didn’t address these topics in their manifesto.

For Lakos, the election was a clear signal from voters that Hungary wants to be a part of the European community. “We chose Europe. We are trying to get back to where we, historically, have always wanted to be, in Europe,” she said. “We have to rebuild the country, and research and innovation will be an important part of it.”