Dear Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Minister Zoltán Balog,
The news about the proposed legislation that may make difficult or impossible for foreign academic institutions in Hungary, including the internationally prestigious Central European University in Budapest – to continue operating in Hungary induced us to express our serious concern in this regard.
We think this step would have very negative consequences on academic freedom in your country, on the fundamental importance of having an open international academic environment and on the quality of tertiary education not only in Hungary, but also in the larger post-socialist region.
Our association, established in 1991, represents more than 300 scholars of comparative economics from all over the world, many of whom have cooperated or co-authored scientific articles or books with CEU researchers or have relied on their research results. We think the difficulties placed on academic freedom of CEU or any other qualified academic institution or their impossibility to operate in Hungary would represent a very serious loss not only to our but also to the world’s scientific
community.
Sincerely,
Jens Hölscher, University of Bournemouth
Jürgen Jerger, University of Regensburg, IOS Regensburg
David M. Kemme, University of Memphis
Michael Keren, Hebrew University
Hartmut Lehmann, University of Bologna
Satoshi Mizobata, Kyoto University
Martin Myant, ETUI
Magdolna Sass, MTA KRTK KTI
Jan Svejnar, Columbia University
Ágnes Szunomár, MTA KRTK VGI
Milica Uvalic, University of Perugia
Urmas Varblane, University of Tartu
Andrei Yakovlev, University – Higher School of Economics, Moscow
Members of the Executive Committee of the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies
and
Wladimir Andreff, University of Paris 1-Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne
Bruno Dallago, University of Trento
Saul Estrin, London School of Economics
Domenico Nuti, Sapienza University, Rome
Tomasz Mickiewicz, Aston University, Birmingham
Marcello Signorelli, University of Perugia
Vittorio Valli, University of Torino
Hans-Jürgen Wagener, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)
former presidents and members of the Advisory Board of the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies