The government is still waiting for the European Commission's response.Continue reading
On Monday evening, the European Parliament’s Committees on Budgets and Culture and Education held an extraordinary joint meeting in the presence of Commissioner Iliana Ivanova and Director-General for Budget Stéphanie Riso to discuss how to make Erasmus+ more inclusive.
“The concerns about inclusion that have been voiced seem rather disingenuous, as hundreds of thousands of students, academics, and researchers from model-changing Hungarian universities are being arbitrarily excluded from EU mobility programs by the European Commission. Enough of the empty promises and statements of Brussels bureaucrats, we need an immediate solution to the Erasmus and Horizon programs,” said Andrea Bocskor.
The Fidesz MEP called it outrageous that
the Commission is currently arbitrarily excluding 200,000 Hungarian students, 20,000 university professors, and 20,000 researchers studying at model-changing universities from EU mobility programs, in an illegal interpretation of the European Council’s decision of December 15, 2022.”
“For almost a year and a half, the European Commission has been making more and more demands on the Hungarian government, and as soon as the parties get closer to a solution, another condition is added. In the conditionality procedure, the Hungarian government sent its position and its textual proposal to the Commission in November 2023, proposing a solution to all the issues raised, and the European Commission is only stalling in response. Is it acceptable that the case of nearly a quarter of a million European citizens goes unanswered for four months?
To date, there has still been no official response as to whether the deadline for last year’s funding will be extended to May 31, 2024 (…). Are the equal rights and equal opportunities of this nearly quarter of a million EU citizens respected?,”
the MEP asked, to which she received no straight answer.
In her speech, Bocskor called on Commission representatives to do their utmost to ensure that this situation is resolved as soon as possible, and that all European citizens benefit from Erasmus+ on an equal footing.
Featured image: Facebook/Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem