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That has never happened before: a university in an EU country that has to move for political reasons. This is what happened to the Central European University (CEU) founded by the American billionaire George Soros.
Now the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled: The Hungarian higher education law, with which the CEU was expelled from Hungary, violates EU law. Among other things, it violated fundamental EU rights, the Luxembourg judge ruled on Tuesday.
The right-wing national government law of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stipulates that foreign universities must also teach in their home country and that the operation of Hungary must be contractually agreed with the home country.
The CEU was the only foreign university that did not meet these new requirements as of 2017. At the end of 2018, the CEU announced its extensive move to Vienna. This affected the courses that award American diplomas, the core of the CEU.
The EU Commission saw the EU law violated by the law and initiated what is known as contract violation proceedings against Budapest in April 2017. Because Hungary did not allay concerns, the Brussels authority eventually sued the ECJ.
He argued that the new law violated “the freedom of higher education institutions to offer services or establish themselves throughout the EU.” At the same time, the new regulations “go against the right to academic freedom, the right to education and business freedom”, which are anchored in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. In addition, the obligations arising from international commercial law, the GATS agreement, would be violated.
The Luxembourg judges largely agreed with the EU Commission. The GATS agreement is being violated and fundamental EU rights, such as academic freedom, are being violated.
According to critics, Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán has been lobbying the country’s civil society for years. Orbán has chosen Soros, who comes from Hungary, as his intimate enemy. It covers it with slander and hostility with anti-Semitic overtones.
The history of the case goes back a long time and has little to do with university issues. But all the more so with George Soros. Through its Open Society Foundation, it has been funding civil society initiatives in central and south-eastern Europe and in the post-Soviet republics for more than three decades.
Reputation of an elite institution
In 1991 he was also the founder of the private University of Central Europe, which set itself the objective of forming a new class of academics and managers of the region, humanist, democratically and constitutionally formed. In central and south-eastern Europe, the CEU has a reputation as an elite institution; many leaders in the region, but also civil society activists, hold a CEU diploma.
The Hungarian Prime Minister, who was once a fellow of Soros’ Open Society Foundation, discovered the billionaire of the American stock market a few years ago as a comfortable enemy who is said to be responsible for all kinds of evils, since the crisis. refugees until the financial crisis.
The Orbán government has carried out campaigns against Soros several times since 2015, mainly in relation to migration, each time with anti-Semitic overtones, because Soros is of Hungarian-Jewish origin and survived the Holocaust in Hungary. In its campaigns, the government repeatedly portrayed Soros as a shooter and financial speculator.
Tuesday’s ruling is not the first time this year that the EU’s highest court has detained right-wing nationalist Orbán and his government. In May, the ECJ declared that key parts of the Hungarian asylum system violated EU law. In June, judges in Luxembourg outlawed the so-called NGO law of 2017.
