(Science|Business) Hungarian universities ready to rejoin Horizon Europe, Erasmus+

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After nearly four years being locked out of Horizon Europe and Erasmus+, dawn is breaking for Hungarian universities. While their return to both schemes is still dependent on major governance reforms, and European Commission approval, some have preparations underway for a prompt and smooth reintegration.

“A return to the programmes would be highly significant, but it would not mean starting again from scratch,” said a spokesperson for the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. “Despite the restrictions, we have worked extensively to maintain and further develop our international partnerships, research collaborations and institutional capacity.”

The University of Miskolc is also ready to move. “From an institutional perspective, reinstatement would primarily involve reactivating and scaling up our international cooperation activities,” said its rector, Zita Horváth. “Internally, our preparations include reviewing and, where necessary, adapting the support structures available for international projects. This covers areas such as grant management, partnership coordination, mobility administration and researcher support.”

The Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and the University of Miskolc are among the 21 Hungarian universities that Brussels barred from accessing grants under Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe from 2022, over concerns that the transfer of their management to public trusts led by loyalists to then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán breached principles of academic freedom and transparency. Since dislodging the right-wing leader in May, Péter Magyar and his Tisza party have been working on a raft of rule-of-law and anti-corruption measures in order to upend the ban on both programmes.

“For Széchenyi István University, full reintegration into direct EU programmes [. . .] would represent a significant opportunity to further strengthen its international cooperation in education, research and innovation,” said Eszter Lukács, its vice-president for international affairs and strategic relations.

Erasmus+

The Commission has already promised Hungary access to Erasmus+, to the relief of the University of Miskolc, where interest in the EU’s education mobility programme has remained high. “Many of our current students have not yet had the opportunity to take part in Erasmus+ during their studies, which means that renewed participation would open up an entirely new range of academic and personal development opportunities for them,” Horváth said.

From September, the university will renew its unit responsible for coordinating Erasmus+ mobility, she added, “to ensure that both outgoing and incoming mobility activities can be relaunched smoothly.”

At the Budapest University of Economics and Business, student mobility has been supported by the Pannónia Scholarship Programme, the domestic alternative to Erasmus+ that the Orbán government launched in 2024. It is unclear whether this back-up scheme will go on once access to the EU funds is restored.

For Lukács, the mechanism is worth keeping as a complement to Erasmus+. “The Pannónia Scholarship Programme has served not merely as an interim solution, but has also contributed to expanding our international partnerships, broadening mobility opportunities and making international experience accessible to a wider range of our students,” she said.

In addition to traditional mobility periods of several months, the programme has offered shorter academic visits of 2-30 days, allowing students who could not commit to a full semester or longer to still gain international experience.

“Its flexibility, particularly its short-term mobility opportunities, has proved especially valuable for a practice-oriented institution such as ours,” the Hungarian Dance University said. “A return to Erasmus+ would therefore not mean restarting international mobility at the university, but adding another well-established European framework to an already active mobility programme.”

Semmelweis University was also able to support outgoing mobility through Hungarian state and institutional funds, including the Pannónia Scholarship Programme, while maintaining bilateral Erasmus agreements as a host institution. “Many of these agreements operated only in one direction, with Semmelweis receiving incoming participants. Nevertheless, [they] remain in place and provide an immediate basis for restarting outgoing Erasmus mobility.”

Horizon Europe

The timetable for Hungary resuming full participation in the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme is less clear, with Brussels and Budapest yet to agree terms. However, the universities are already making plans.

The Hungarian Dance University is identifying cooperation areas and partners on which to build future participation. “We already have academics and researchers with established international professional networks, and one of our priorities is to connect these relationships more systematically with institution-level international cooperation,” it said. “In parallel, we aim to gradually broaden our international project portfolio from predominantly mobility-based activities towards partnership-based cooperation and collaborative projects.”

As with student mobility, Hungarian universities have been relying on national initiatives, such as the Government Guarantee Fund, which began substituting for frozen EU funding in 2023, and the HU-rizon programme, which has supported international collaborative research projects led by Hungarian teams since 2024.

Széchenyi István University has benefitted from both. “Our researchers collaborate with a number of leading international universities and, within the framework of the Hungarian HU-rizon programme, have prepared several project proposals that could provide an excellent foundation for future Horizon Europe collaborations,” Lukács said. The projects, she went on, range from healthy ageing to sustainable battery technologies to intelligent rehabilitation systems.

At the University of Miskolc, researchers have also stayed active in international networks and informal cooperation, professional dialogue and preliminary proposal planning has continued. According to Horváth, the establishment has already started discussions with industrial partners and, in late September, it plans to bring together European partner institutions to “revitalise” collaborations. The objective, she added, is to “lay the foundations for future consortia once eligibility has been fully restored.”

This goal is shared by researchers at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, who have also kept participating in consortium-building. “A return to Horizon Europe would allow them to engage in these partnerships as full partners again and to pursue new European collaborations with greater scope,” its spokesperson said.

Semmelweis University, meanwhile, is confident that its researchers are “well prepared” for renewed cooperation. “Existing networks and established collaborations put them in a strong position to engage in upcoming Horizon Europe calls.”

The same goes for the Budapest University of Economics and Business, which since 2022 has focused on maintaining international partnerships, “the vast majority of which have remained intact,” according to its spokesperson.