Viktor Orban seizes control of Hungary’s universities

A GOOD UNIVERSITY prizes original thought. And Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, is certainly an original thinker. Since 2010, when his Fidesz party won two-thirds of the seats in parliament, he has been dreaming up innovative ways to turn Hungary back into an autocracy, while maintaining a democratic façade. On April 27th his government passed a law transferring control of the country’s 11 main state universities to a series of foundations that are likely to be run by his allies. The party has already asserted its grip over institutions such as the electoral system, the media, the courts and much of the economy. Now it wants total power over the ivory towers.

Like most of Mr Orban’s illiberal reforms, the plan is complicated, brilliant and likely to be copied by aspiring strongmen in other countries. The universities have been placed under the control of public foundations, along with billions of euros-worth of assets (including a palace, a harbour and shares in state-owned companies) which are supposed to help finance them. The foundations’ boards are initially appointed by Mr Orban’s government, and those appointed so far consist mainly of Fidesz members or sympathisers. Subsequent vacancies will be filled by candidates chosen by the boards themselves.

You might think that if Fidesz loses power, a new government could reorganise the foundations. But with its two-thirds supermajority in parliament, Fidesz has already written their governance rules into Hungary’s constitution. Even if the opposition were to win next year’s election, which is conceivable since the fractious parties have at last started to join forces, they would almost certainly lack enough seats to alter the constitution. In effect, Fidesz may just have granted itself control over Hungary’s universities in virtual perpetuity.

The government says the new system will let universities manage their own buildings and give them stable multi-year financing in place of annual state budgets. That is deceptive. Such administrative reorganisations were under discussion for years at several universities. The new law usurps those reforms, giving the new boards unlimited authority over the schools, the foundations and their vast assets.

The fear is that Fidesz will use this control as it has used control of the media: to stifle dissenting voices and to churn out propaganda. Its hobby horses include the evils of immigration, liberalism and gay and trans rights. It also spreads loopy conspiracy theories about the European Union, and the financier George Soros’s supposed plan to flood Hungary with Muslim immigrants. The government has already forced state universities to drop gender-studies programmes. It used legal harassment to force the Central European University, a formerly Budapest-based institution founded by Mr Soros that was a source of criticism of Mr Orban, to (mostly) decamp to Austria. Freedom House, a watchdog, rated Hungary as a fully free democracy in 2010. Its most recent report, published this week, lists it for the second year running as a “hybrid regime” (one step up from “authoritarian”). Hungary now scores worse than Serbia.

What happens in Budapest does not stay in Budapest. Mr Orban’s institution-nobbling ideas tend to spread. Poland’s nationalist government has already mimicked Fidesz’s takeovers of the media and of the courts. Populists in Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovenia have attempted similar tricks. France’s Marine Le Pen is a fan of Mr Orban, too. One reason why democracy is in decline around the world is that its enemies keep swapping tips on how to undermine it.

If a political takeover of academia can happen in Hungary, a member of a club of rich, liberal democracies, it can happen anywhere. But being in the EU also provides means of resistance. After years of debate, the EU has adopted a “rule of law mechanism”. In principle, countries that trample legal principles can have their aid restricted. Compared with the size of its economy, Hungary was the biggest net beneficiary of EU funding in 2014-20, according to Bruegel, a think-tank. True, cutting aid would be hard. The European Commission has been dragging its feet on establishing guidelines for doing so, and Hungary’s allies, particularly Poland, will try to veto any such move.

Nonetheless, it is long past time to act. For years, the EU has wearily accepted Hungary’s ever more corrupt autocracy as if it were inevitable, and bankrolled it lavishly. Instead, it should heed the words of a Hungarian academic, Geza Teleki, who warned that illiberal regimes want “to abolish the autonomy of the universities” because “every autonomous group is naturally something they must get rid of”. Teleki was testifying to America’s Congress in 1954 about how Hungary’s old communist party used to operate. Hungarians deserve better. ■