Hungarian academics are cautiously optimistic that Sunday’s landslide electoral defeat for prime minister Viktor Orbán could bring better times for the country’s researchers. Under 16 years of rule by Orbán’s Fidesz party, academic freedom in Hungary has suffered, while in recent years most researchers have been locked out of the EU’s Horizon Europe research programme and Erasmus+ student exchanges.
With the opposition Tisza party – led by Péter Magyar, a former Orbán ally – winning a decisive majority of parliamentary seats, policy experts are hopeful that the new government can transform Hungary’s relations with the EU and reverse policies that have stifled the independence of Hungarian universities. Magyar’s centre-right party captured around 54% of votes, compared with 38% for Fidesz, but the Hungarian electoral system rejigged by Orbán gave the winners 138 out of 199 seats.
‘People were fed up with the economic performance of the country and sluggish income growth, but also with the worsening quality of education, health care and infrastructure,’ says Dóra Piroska, a political scientist based at the Central European University – an institution that relocated from Budapest to Vienna in 2019 after being targeted by Orbán’s government.
‘Very few people believed that they would get a two-thirds majority,’ says Petra Bárd, a law professor at Radboud University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands who previously headed the Criminal Law Division at the Hungarian National Institute of Criminology. ‘This has huge consequences for the restoration of the rule of law.’ The structure of the constitutional court and the supreme court can be changed and new judges can be appointed so that Fidesz loyalists do not torpedo reforms, she adds.
Restoring academic freedoms
During the campaign, Magyar promised to reverse the Orbán government’s move to place state universities under the control of public interest trusts. The European Commission had criticised political conflicts of interest in appointments to these controlling bodies. ‘The personnel of these foundations can very quickly be replaced by actual independent experts,’ says Piroska. ‘A fundamental institutional change will require more time.’
This was something that would have been difficult maybe even impossible to achieve with a simple majority, says Bárd. ‘Hungarians are not famous for being optimistic, but I have very high hopes that the two-thirds majority will make things, legally speaking, much easier,’ she adds.
As well as universities, Orbán’s government had tightened control over the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. ‘The scientific landscape has become increasingly non-transparent, unfair and unpredictable,’ says Imola Wilhelm, a neuroscientist at the HUN-REN Biological Research Centre in Szeged and a former co-chair of the Hungarian Young Academy.
The control exercised by the Orbán government led to a reported reluctance among academics to criticise authorities. ‘Self-censorship in the last few years has only gotten worse,’ says Bárd. ‘At universities in Hungary, the government doesn’t tell you what not to say, so you don’t know where the line is that must not be crossed. You exercise self-censorship and become more cautious.’ Hungary was ranked in the bottom 20–30% in the 2026 Academic Freedom Index, with a significant decline in the last 10 years.
Many researchers hope that the election result could pave the way for the European Commission to allow Hungarian researchers access to the next round of Horizon calls in autumn, though that deadline is tight. ‘The Commission has an interest in the Magyar government remaining stable and functional and fulfilling some of the promises made during the election campaign,’ says Piroska. Similarly, Bárd thinks the Commission will be well disposed to reopen the gates to Horizon Europe.
A 2024 survey of PhDs aged between 31 and 45 years of age found that around 40% of Hungarian early-career researchers had experienced negative consequences of the EU funds’ suspension. One-quarter of respondents said they planned to start looking for jobs abroad as a result of the suspension. Meanwhile, a 2025 survey of more than 5000 scientists found that 53% considered leaving a scientific career, including 70% of early-career researchers.
‘What we really need is stability and transparency,’ says Wilhelm, an author of the 2024 report. ‘We expect the re-establishment of international reputation, the withdrawal of political influence from low-level decision making, as well as a gradual rebuilding of trust within the community.’
No comments yet