Bóka on Erasmus case: In our reading, we have fulfilled all legal requirements

The Commission's response is still being studied in detail, Hungarian EU Affairs Minister János Bóka said on Tuesday, commenting on the decision according to which Hungarian public trust foundations maintaining institutions of higher education are still not allowed to enter into any commitments for Erasmus and Horizon programmes.

It was at the end of 2022 that on a Commission proposal, member states' ministers in the EU Council almost unanimously decided to exclude all public trust foundations and the institutions maintained by them from all new EU funding commitments. They said that these foundations (which are behind the model-changing universities, but MCC's Foundation, the Mol – New Europe Foundation also belongs in the group were not operating transparently enough, and having political decision-makers on their boards created conflicts of interest, adding at the time that the Hungarian government had failed to address the Commission's objections, which it had been made aware of months earlier.

The measure has been progressively causing more and more problems for the universities which underwent the model change. By last summer, such institutions complained that the ban was costing them millions of euros in losses on Horizon Europe research collaborations, and by now their students are not even allowed to go on Erasmus exchanges.

The government submitted an amendment for public consultation in October, which the Parliament adopted in November. Admittedly, it only reflects the government's own position and not all the Commission's proposals have been accepted. According to leaked information, it is weaker than what the body was expecting, and exempts foundations that are not behind a "higher education institution benefiting from EU funds" from a substantial part of the restrictions. Moreover, according to its final article, the amendment would effectively only enter into force once the ban on commitments has been lifted, but practical implementation is something the Commission normally expects as a condition. After several subtle hints, on Monday, the European Commission said that the amendment does not adequately address the risk posed by conflicts of interest on the boards of these foundations.

The following day, after a meeting of EU ministers in Brussels, Bóka said the government was still studying the details, but at first glance the requirements appeared to go far beyond the original Council decision. In their reading, the European Commission is making additional requirements, which is very difficult to interpret as anything other than discriminatory political pressuring.

The case of the public trust foundations is part of the conditionality mechanism, where a total of €6.3 billion in catch-up funding has been frozen due to 17 different conditions. If this is not resolved by the end of the year, more than €1 billion will be lost for good. Alongside its assessment on the public trust foundations, the European Commission said that not all the conditions of the procedure had been met (and the government had not sent any notification about this). When Euronews asked Bóka about this, the minister said:

"In our reading, we have already fulfilled all legal requirements necessary for full access to these funds" and to ensure that everyone has access to the Erasmus and Horizon programmes.

It would be "an extreme oversimplification of the situation" to say that nothing has been done because 28 pieces of legislation have been adopted or amended. The Hungarian government has done a lot, "in our understanding, it has done everything required of it".

Predicting the future is difficult, Bóka said, when asked whether he was confident that the subsidies would be unblocked before the 2026 elections (Prime Minister Viktor Orbán recently described the issue of the frozen funds as a post-2026 problem.) The EU Affairs Minister said that they intend to use all political and legal means to achieve this, including constructive dialogue with the European Commission.

Cover photo: Council of the European Union / European Union