The University of Debrecen filed a lawsuit against the Council of the European Union on March 2, 2023, concerning the impossibility of its participation in European collaborations and the ban of its students to take part in ERASMUS mobilities. It sought to annul Paragraph (2) of Article (1) 2 of Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/2506 of 15 December 2022 on the measures protecting the EU budget against violations of the principles of the rule of law in Hungary on the basis of Article 263 TFEU.
“Our university decided to initiate this lawsuit because, in our opinion, the implementing decision of the EU Council contested by us violates applicable EU substantive and procedural law in several respects, as well as the ‘Enabling Regulation’ that had made the implementing decision possible in the first place,” said György Kossa, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Count István Tisza Foundation for the University of Debrecen, responsible for maintaining the institution, to hirek.unideb.hu.
In support of its claim, the University of Debrecen cited a total of nineteen legal grounds, including, on several points, the Treaty on the European Union and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
On Tuesday's agenda, personal hearings were held before the nine-member Grand Chamber of the General Court of the European Union. The defendants, including the European Council as well as the European Parliament and the European Commission, which intervened in support of it, were represented by as many as ten lawyers, while the University of Debrecen and Hungary, which intervened in support of it, were represented by five lawyers as well as by Professor Zoltán Bács and György Kossa, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, present on behalf of our university and the foundation that maintains and operates it. Professor Zoltán Bács, rector elect of the University of Debrecen, representing the plaintiff, was also given the opportunity to share our institution's position with the court at the conclusion of the oral presentations.
“I have been living and working at the University of Debrecen for the past 37 years, during which time I have held various elected leadership positions for 19 years as a member of the university community and as a professor at the university. I wish to say that the university community is deeply hurt and confused by the decision of the Council of the European Union. The Hungarian university and academic community is indeed an integral part of numerous European collaborations, yet it has been marginalized by this decision, hindering academic freedom, the movement of Hungarian students in Europe and, incidentally, university development. This simply cannot be a political issue: it is rather a moral issue that seriously violates the University of Debrecen with regard to equal treatment and opportunities,” said Zoltán Bács.
Professor Bács noted that moral damage is always difficult to express in numbers, but the impossibility of European collaborations and the banning of student participation in ERASMUS, as well as the cessation of sustainability developments, can be clearly illustrated through figures that speak for themselves. Since the measure was introduced under the Implementing Decision, approximately 40,000 students and 2,000 instructors and researchers in Debrecen have been excluded from European mobilities and mutual knowledge transfers.
“Abiding by the principle of external review, our university engaged the services of PWC (Price Waterhouse Coopers), an international consulting firm, in 2023, following the decision of the Council of the European Union, in order to assess the extent to which it complies with the autonomy criteria (4 in total) of the European University Association and the extent to which its governance structure is in line with political independence. The results confirmed the fact that our university's independence had increased in all respects whatsoever. We also learned that we are very well positioned in international comparisons in terms of organizational, employment-related, financial, and academic aspects and that, in quite a few cases, we are among the top universities in Europe and in the world. These results further reinforced the fact that the exclusion of our university from European funding opportunities is a crime against science, youth, and higher education, implementing political and financial means against those who are outside of politics, whose main objective is the international exchange of knowledge, building the knowledge of the future, and improving the welfare of humanity. Our position concerning the rule of law is firm, maintaining that unlawful, disproportionate, and unjustified measures cannot be used in its defense,” said Zoltán Bács.
Following the meeting, the two Hungarian leaders who participated in it said that they felt the hearing was conducted with sincere interest on the part of the Swedish presiding judge and that, during the discussion, questions were primarily directed at lawyers representing European Union organizations, on which our university's lawyers and Hungary's legal representatives were then able to reflect and add their responses.
At the hearing, which followed one and a half years of preparatory proceedings, the European Union's legal representatives repeatedly questioned if our university had any legal recourse against the Council's decision at all.
They declared that their main goal was not the punishing of our institution. They repeatedly referred to the conflict of interest of certain members of the boards of trustees of universities and the potential consequences thereof, implying the possibility of political influence and emphasizing the need to protect European Union funds. However, they acknowledged that the public procurement process was no longer the focus of their considerations, as it had been proven that it continued to apply to universities that had changed their model, including institutions and foundations performing public tasks from state and EU funds, which Hungary had already clarified earlier. The legal representatives of the EU organizations also stated that Hungary had partially complied with the Commission's conflict of interest requirements, but then backtracked on some points. The legal representatives of our university explained at the hearing that the university continues to have no influence on the requirements in question and that none of the other issues raised are true of the University of Debrecen or the foundation that maintains and operates it. Thus, the university and its teachers and students are the only injured party who had suffered damage in this case. In addition, one of Hungary's legal representatives noted that it is usually very difficult to meet demands that are constantly changing and must be pursued as a moving target.
An essential element of the university's motion is that it objects to the implementing regulation in that the EU bodies did not conduct institution-specific investigations, but announced a collective decision, despite the fact that it would not have been an impossible task to examine the circumstances individually in the case of just 21 institutions. The representatives of the EU organizations objected to the court’s taking into account PWC's evidentiary international expert study on the University of Debrecen because, in their opinion, the university submitted it late in 2023, although immediately upon its completion. At the same time, they also cited documents dated as late as December 2024. The hearing then continued in the afternoon following the lunch break. Considerable emphasis then was laid on the fact that, according to the founding charter of Count István Tisza Foundation for the University of Debrecen, which is responsible for maintaining and operating the University of Debrecen, three members of the foundation's board of trustees, i.e. the majority, must be affiliated with the University of Debrecen. This change in the founding charter also proved to the court that the foundation was politically independent.
Tuesday's hearing was scheduled to be followed on Wednesday by the trial initiated by five additional Hungarian universities (SE, ÁTE, ÓE, ME, DUE), to be continued by a deliberation phase, which may last for several months and, only after that, will the Court of Justice of the European Union announce its decisions.
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