Debrecen university students demonstrated for Hungarian higher education on Wednesday in front of the building of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, the university’s press center informed the media.
In their statement, they wrote that students from the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Debrecen marched to the Curia in Luxembourg on the day of the hearing in the lawsuit brought by five Hungarian universities against the EU Council.
The faculty has been organizing a week-long European study trip for its students for over 20 years, during which they visit various companies as well as EU institutions in Brussels, Strasbourg, and Luxembourg, reads the statement.
On Wednesday in Luxembourg, the students visited the European Court of Auditors in the morning, and afterward, they marched to the Curia building to show support for Hungarian universities on the day hearings were taking place inside.
A day earlier, on Tuesday, the Court of Justice of the European Union, based in Luxembourg, heard the University of Debrecen’s case against the Council of the European Union, which was filed in March 2023. The university challenged the exclusion of its students from the Erasmus program.
Fact
In 2023, the European Commission suspended grants from the Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe programs for 21 Hungarian universities operated by public trust foundations. The decision was driven by concerns over governance transparency, academic independence, and conflicts of interest, as many university boards included government-aligned trustees. While the Hungarian government called for the resignation of these officials in February 2023, legislative changes to address the conflict of interest were not implemented, leaving the issue unresolved and funding restricted.After a year of stalled negotiations, at the beginning of December last year, Hungary notified the Commission of the legislative amendments. However, well before the deadline, the Commission announced that the reform presented by the government “is not sufficient to address risks of conflicts of interests” in the boards of the university foundations’ public interest trusts, meaning that the Hungarian model-changing universities are still not able to participate in the EU scholarships.
It is worth noting that the government’s proposal was submitted after the European Commission had refused for about a year to inform the Hungarian side whether the document would address the Commission’s objections. Hungary adopted the new amendment in autumn 2023, introducing key changes: trusteeships are capped at six years, high-ranking government officials are barred from serving on boards during their term, a one-year cooling-off period applies for former officials, and the State Audit Office will oversee conflict-of-interest compliance.
As previously reported, the reason for the universities’ lawsuit against the EU Council is that the institution has suspended 55 percent of payments for three operational programs in Hungary and has also banned them from entering into contracts with the EU, due to conflict of interest rules for public interest trusts.
Via MTI, Featured image: Wikimedia Commons
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