Viktor Orbán blasts Brussels for Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe ‘blackmail’

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán says his government is going forward with a legislative proposal he hopes will translate into immediate access to funding from Horizon Europe and Erasmus+, after a two-year funding ban.

The proposal  involves amending the legislation passed in 2022 that prompted the European Commission to block Hungarian researchers and academics from getting EU money through the two funding schemes.

Speaking in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Orbán accused the Commission of using the Horizon Europe funding ban as leverage in political disagreements. “Of course, it would be better to finance [research] from the European money, but we would not like to give up important values of the Hungarians in exchange of that kind of decisions, which we consider blackmail anyway," Orbán said.

Over 30 Hungarian institutions, including 21 universities, have been barred since December 2022 from accessing Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ funds, due to concerns their governance structures breach rule of law principles.

Budapest says the new legislation should prompt the EU to end the exclusion of the 21 Hungarian universities. The governance of these organisations has been gradually transferred to public trust foundations, which placed a great deal of control in the hands of boards of trustees made up of members who were initially hand-picked by the government.

The ministry of culture and innovation has now submitted amendments to the regulation governing these public trust foundations. The move would end “discrimination against students and researchers” from the 21 universities.

The Hungarian government claims it sent the Commission a draft law 10 months ago but did not get an answer from Brussels. “The Hungarian government already presented a bill to the European Commission in November 2023, but has not received a response from the Brussels body for 10 months,” Orbán said.

Now, the Hungarian government is to go ahead unilaterally, but it is unclear if this will end the impasse. “We have had a number of negotiations with Brussels recently, but no progress has been made,” the government said in a statement last week.

According to a Commission spokesperson, Hungary “informally shared”  the draft  legislation amendments on 1 October, but “has not formally notified any new remedial measures via written notification that would adequately address the outstanding issues”.

The Commission can propose lifting the funding ban to the Council of the EU, but only after “Hungary addresses in a satisfactory manner the issues that led to these measures and notifies the Commission that it has taken remedial action,” the spokeperson said.

Mitigating losses

Soon after the funding ban, Hungarian researchers felt the effects, even though the Hungarian government created a guarantee fund with an initial €12.8 million to cover the participation of researchers from the affected institutions in Horizon Europe projects.

A recent survey by the Hungarian Young Academy shows around 40% of early career researchers have experienced negative consequences.

International collaborators and their funding agencies are reluctant to write joint proposals with Hungarian researchers, even if they are not working in one of the institutions affected by the ban. International consortium leaders often ask Hungarian researchers to move their projects to institutions that are not suspended, or to change jobs.

Orbán said backup national schemes organised by the government are “eating up a certain percentage of the budget” but “it's a reasonable spending to give the money for the scholarship of the young students, to give the financial sources for the researchers.”

Even though Hungarian researchers still had access to Horizon Europe, the EU funding ban prompted partners across Europe to avoid inviting them to consortia. Hungary said the Commission should have communicated more clearly that the ban only relates to accessing EU funds, and not to participation in EU projects. The Commission later clarified the matter in an email to national contact points.

Last month, the ongoing dispute between Brussels and Hungary over the EU funding ban overshadowed “very fruitful” ministerial talks on the future of European research and education.