According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Chief Press Officer, an American-Hungarian agreement on the Central European University (CEU) is possible, and several similar treaties already exist between the two countries’ governments.

In a statement to Hungarian news agency MTI on Friday, Tamás Menczer confirmed news reports that the U.S. and Hungarian governments had already concluded three agreements on education, and accordingly it is difficult to understand the American government’s standpoint according to which it does not have jurisdiction with regard to cooperation agreements on education.

“The ball is currently not in Hungary’s court in the dispute concerning the CEU; we have been waiting for weeks for a reply from the United States to a question on the issue”, he emphasised, adding that immediately after being appointed Prime Ministerial Commissioner Kristóf Altusz had contacted the United States’ chargé d’affaires in Hungary, with whom he had already held talks three weeks ago. “Since then we have been waiting for a reply to the question of who is the chief negotiator who we should talk to, but we have not received a reply to this question so far”, he explained.

The Press Chief noted that negotiations with China concerning foreign universities are at an advanced stage, and the parties are not far from the successful conclusion of an inter-governmental agreement.

In an article published on Friday, news portal PestiSrácok.hu wrote that in recent decades Hungary has concluded three government-level agreements with the United States on the subject of education. According to the article, the first was the treaty between the Government of the People’s Republic of Hungary and the Government of the United States of America on cooperation in culture, education, science and technology concluded on 6 April 1977, the second was the 30 November 1998 agreement between the Hungarian Government and the United States Government on the legal status of the American International School of Budapest, and the third was the agreement between the two governments on the establishment of the Hungarian American Commission for Educational Exchange, which was concluded in Washington on 8 March 2007.

Accordingly, the portal described claims by the CEU’s rector and American diplomats that it is impossible to conclude an intergovernmental agreement on education as untrue. Citing a source “that has insight into the current diplomatic and professional negotiations”, the news portal added that according to the relative article of the Hungarian Act on Higher Education, in the case of federal states it is also possible to conclude an agreement with a member state, based on a preliminary agreement with central government, if central government does not have the jurisdiction to recognise the mandatory nature of the international agreement.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade/MTI)