Hungary’s top-ranked university is fighting for its existence after the country’s increasingly authoritarian government tabled legislative changes that would make it impossible for the institution to remain in Budapest.

The Central European University (CEU), a graduate institution set up after the fall of communism to defend democracy in Eastern Europe, could be the first international institution to fall victim to ascendant illiberal governments in Europe and the US, according to observers.

It is believed the government of prime minister Viktor Orban has been emboldened by the election of Donald Trump as US president to move against pro-democracy organisations, particularly those funded by the multibillionaire George Soros, such as CEU. Legislative amendments tabled on March 28 will prohibit the institution from issuing US-accredited degrees; force CEU to open a campus in New York; change its name; and end an agreement whereby non-EU staff don’t need a work permit, making it “impossible for the university to continue its operations as an institution of higher education in Budapest, the CEU’s home for 25 years”.

Speaking at a press conference in Budapest on March 29, CEU president Michael Ignatieff called for the amendments to be withdrawn. “We plan to remain here,” he said. But he added that, by tabling them, the Hungarian government had eroded trust so completely that a new international agreement is needed to make the CEU’s status in the country secure.

A Hungarian government spokesman told Times Higher Education that the amendments are a response to a review of foreign universities operating in the country. It recently discovered that 28 are operating unlawfully by not complying with regulations. Because of the proposed stricter rules, “universities from outside the EU can only hold courses and issue degrees in Hungary on the basis of an international treaty”, he says. Prof. Ignatieff says the new legislation has “carefully” excluded EU institutions, meaning that it targeted a “very narrow set of international institutions” including CEU.

The CEU is the latest pro-democracy organisation funded by Soros to come under attack in Hungary. Prime minister Orban has railed against the investor, who was born in Hungary and has poured money into institutions that aim to increase openness and transparency in former communist countries, and support refugees, whom Orban has sought to block from Hungary.

Other Soros-backed groups have been targeted by a proposed new law that would force organisations which receive foreign funding to register, Reuters has reported. Even receiving scholarships from Soros-funded organisations has become a political issue in Hungary; last year, it was reported that Orban would be happy to repay a scholarship he had received from the Soros Foundation to help fund a brief period of study at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1989.

According to Simon Marginson, director of the Centre for Global Higher Education at the UCL Institute of Education, London, CEU “looks likely to be the first international university to be made a victim of the new ‘closed’ brand of nationalism epitomised by Brexit, Trump policies (and) the Le Pen agenda” unless “the threat can be headed off”.

(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)