Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban knows well how important culture and education are. He knows well how much the identity of a country is formed from the intellectual formation, especially of young people, and how crucial it is for the maintenance of power. And so the parliament, of which it controls a strong majority, has approved a bill – drawn up by its deputy premier – establishing new foundations that will take over the direction of Hungarian universities and cultural institutions. A move that gives a clear direction towards the ideological positions of the right-wing government in power.
Currently, most Hungarian universities are state-owned but have great academic autonomy. Now the universities, academies and conservatories will be reorganized and managed by foundations because the current situation requires “a rethinking of the role of the state,” says the government. The executive will in fact appoint the boards of directors that manage the foundations, which will not only have enormous influence on academic choices, but will control huge real estate assets and receive 2.7 billion euros of EU funds to modernize the universities. These foundations – about ten – will also be funded with shares in blue-chip companies such as state-owned oil conglomerate MOL, pharmaceutical company Gedeon Richter, a steel mill and a football stadium. Assets are worth billions of euros in total, according to Bloomberg’s calculations, and foundations are subject to less financial scrutiny than public entities. The Hungarian Minister of Innovation and Technology, Laszlo Palkovics, said the new system “will make Hungarian youth the winners of the future by providing them with modern training”. But no one, apart from Orban’s loyalists, believes the government’s sweetened version. The birth of the foundations would be just another step in that “ideological war”, as defined by Attila Chikan, professor at Corvinus University in Budapest and former minister in the first Orban government in 1998, declared by the prime minister: “Not they make it a secret: they want to take over intellectual power after political and economic power, ”he told Reuters.
The new law comes after the government tightened controls on academic research and forced one of the best liberal schools, Central European University, to move to Vienna in 2019. The text reads: “The expectation is that foundations actively defend the survival and well-being of the nation and its interests ”, with a“ strengthening of national identity ”. According to some analysts, this law that, after almost total control over the media increases the government’s power over research and education, could be the signal that Orban is worried about losing the 2022 elections and is trying everything in order to maintain the its influence. After ousting the prestigious Central European University from Vienna and claiming greater control over the Academy of Sciences, the country’s leading research institute, Orban also invited Fudan University to open the first campus of a Chinese university. in continental Europe, promising to entrust the construction of a complex worth 1.5 billion euros to a Chinese company.