From EU sanctions and isolation to reintegration: Hungary higher education and research restructuring

Since 2018, Hungary has reformed its higher education and research ecosystem, resulting in EU sanctions and isolation that the country is now trying to recover from after eight years and a drastic political change.

Viktor Orbán’s government first restructured academia starting in 2018 by stripping the Hungarian Academy of Sciences of its institutes and transferring public universities to government-controlled public-interest foundations (KEKVAs) in 2019.

These reforms triggered EU sanctions in December 2022, excluding 34 institutions from funding over conflict-of-interest and transparency concerns.

They were followed by what Hungarians perceived as a profound isolation: 2024 empirical studies by the Hungarian Young Academy revealed that 40% of early-career researchers suffered negative…