Hungarian universities were excluded from Erasmus — Government now promotes replacement on Wizz Air plane
The Hungarian government has launched a nationwide promotional campaign for its Pannónia Scholarship Programme, which was created after several Hungarian universities lost access to the EU’s Erasmus exchange scheme. One of the campaign’s most visible elements is a Wizz Air aircraft now bearing the programme’s logo and slogan – but behind the showy exterior, participation numbers tell a different story.
Pannónia advertised on Wizz Air plane
On Monday, Minister of Culture and Innovation Balázs Hankó unveiled the branded aircraft at Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc International Airport. “The Pannónia Programme is light-years better than Erasmus,” Hankó declared, as the plane took off for Brussels — a symbolic destination, given the EU’s role in the universities’ exclusion from Erasmus.
What is Pannónia?
According to HVG, the minister failed to mention, however, that the very need for an alternative scholarship system stems from Hungary’s controversial higher education reforms. In 2022, the government pushed universities to switch to a so-called “foundation model,” placing them under the control of public-interest asset management foundations. Brussels suspended Erasmus funding for these “model-switching” institutions due to unresolved conflict-of-interest concerns — notably the presence of government officials in university boards.
The Pannónia Scholarship Programme was developed as a workaround to this impasse, but despite ambitious rhetoric, it is far from reaching the scale of Erasmus. While the government anticipated 8,000 Hungarian students would participate in the programme for the 2024/2025 academic year, only around 700 actually applied in the first semester. By comparison, in 2023, more than 10,000 Hungarian students studied abroad through Erasmus.
Hankó touted several supposed advantages of Pannónia, such as increased flexibility – allowing trips abroad for just a few days instead of a full semester – and higher funding per student. However, critics argue that short visits offer little academic value, and Erasmus already includes similar options, albeit limited to PhD students.
Numbers lower than expected
Despite the government’s upbeat messaging and high-visibility promotion, including the Wizz Air partnership, the numbers indicate that students have been slow to embrace the new scheme. And while officials like Hankó and Tempus Public Foundation president Károly Czibere claim that the programme represents an “unprecedented opportunity,” they omit a crucial fact: Pannónia exists only because Brussels no longer trusts Hungary’s university governance model.
By replacing Erasmus with a domestically controlled programme and launching flashy PR campaigns abroad — even as the core issues remain unresolved — the Hungarian government appears more interested in optics than solutions.
Read more about Hungarian higher education HERE, and about Wizz Air HERE.
Read also:
You don’t want to accept hundreds of thousands of violent, parasitic, third-world trash?
We’re going to punish you financially and juridically, as well as by blocking cultural and education exchange initiatives. And if we ever succeed in our wet dream of having an E.U. army, we’ll send tanks to the streets of Budapest, too.
For, nothing says “tolerance” and “diversity” as demanding total conformity and obedience.
Eff E.U.