European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium June 17, 2022. (REUTERS/Yves Herman)
Budapest: Budapest on Thursday slammed the European Commission's decision to withhold grants from Hungarian universities as "unacceptable and intolerable" in the latest spat between the two sides.
The commission said last month that 21 Hungarian universities will no longer be eligible for the bloc's Erasmus grant funding, which allows students to spend terms at partner institutions abroad.
The universities would also not be eligible to apply for funding for the bloc's Horizon Europe research exchange programmes, said the commission.
The decision is part of the wider freezing of EU funds for Hungary over corruption concerns.
"What the European Commission is doing with Hungary is unacceptable and intolerable," Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief-of-staff Gergely Gulyas told reporters.
He added that Budapest was open to making legislative changes to exclude politicians from the foundation boards if requested to do so by the commission.
Several officials from Orban's ruling party Fidesz, including government ministers and state secretaries, currently sit on foundation-run university boards.
"We do have concerns when it comes to the new legislation introduced by Hungary on November 1... which essentially facilitates the involvement of senior level political executives in the boards of public interest trusts," commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari said in Brussels.
Since coming to power in 2010 Orban has taken over swaths of educational and cultural institutions and limited the autonomy of schools and universities.
The 21 universities -- including some of Hungary's top colleges -- were moved into foundation ownership following a 2021 law that critics said was aimed at cementing Fidesz's influence in education.
The government insists that the new foundation model for universities helps to modernise higher education by facilitating cooperation with the private sector.
Gulyas said that if a compromise is not reached by March the government will fund next year's Erasmus grants estimated at 12.5 million euros ($13.5 million) from the state budget.
He also added Hungary was willing to take the case to the European Court of Justice if the commission insists on the blockage.
A grants cut would "seriously affect the students, lecturers, researchers and other employees of the institutions concerned," a statement from the Hungarian Network of Academics (OH), an independent body of teachers, said on Thursday.
"The responsibility for this disaster is not the EU, but solely the Hungarian government," it added.
Budapest and Brussels have been negotiating for months, with the EU freezing billions of euros in funds earmarked for Hungary while it presses for anti-corruption reforms.
