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The European Court of Justice on Tuesday ruled that a 2017 Hungarian law on foreign branch campuses is incompatible with European Union law. The law was widely seen as a targeted attack by Hungary’s right-wing government on Central European University and its founder and honorary board chairman, the liberal financier George Soros.
Passage of the law ultimately forced CEU to move most of its academic operations from Budapest to Vienna. The university said that the Hungarian government refused to ratify a treaty agreement that would have allowed it to continue offering American-accredited degree programs in Hungary per the terms of the 2017 law.
The Court of Justice found that the treaty requirement failed to comply with trade commitments and furthermore stands “contrary to the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (‘the Charter’) relating to academic freedom, the freedom to found higher education institutions and the freedom to conduct a business.”
Soros welcomed the ruling as "a victory for the fundamental values of the European Union," according to the news agency Agence France Presse. But he said it came “too late” for CEU, which moved the bulk of its operations to Vienna in 2019.
"We cannot return to Hungary because its prevailing laws don't meet the requirements of academic freedom," Soros said.
