Future of university depends on talks between American, Hungarian gov't: Orban

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban charged the Central European University (CEU) here with regulative irregularities on Kossuth public radio on Friday because it had been issuing both Hungarian and American degrees.

The government submitted a bill to parliament earlier this week, re-regulating foreign higher education institutes operating in Hungary, which CEU rector and Canadian national Michael Ignatieff has said is aimed directly against CEU.

CEU is a private graduate-level university located in Budapest, and is accredited both in the United States, through the State University of New York (SUNY), and in Hungary. Founded in 1991, it currently has approximately 1,400 students and faculty members from more than 130 countries.

Orban said that the future of CEU depended on talks and an accord between the American and Hungarian governments.

Peter Torcsi, research director of the Hungarian Research Center on Fundamental Rights, said the CEU was not the only school targeted, since the bill before parliament would affect an additional 27 foreign schools. The new law will require that a school operating in Hungary have a "country of origin", he said.

According to Janos Lazar, the minister of the prime minister's office, the new law will require an international treaty with the government of the home country of a university operating in Hungary. The school must also have accredited courses in its home country. He called CEU's protest against the pending legislation "inciting political hysteria".

The United States' embassy in Budapest has voiced its concern over the Hungarian move, describing CEU as a "premier academic institution".

Scholars, including Hungarian Academy of Sciences President Laszlo Lovasz, have praised the school. Lovasz called it a "very significant scientific center" on the academy's website. Endit