The Government is making every effort to enable internationally renowned researchers to prosper in their homeland, in Hungary, Deputy Prime Minister Tibor Navracsics said on Thursday at the summer camp of doctoral students in Balatonkenese.

As part of the open legislation programme, the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with the National Organisation of Doctoral Students in the autumn of 2011. Thanks to this arrangement, dialogue between the Government and doctoral students has been ongoing ever since. There are at present 174 doctoral schools in Hungary.

The Government is making every effort to enable internationally renowned researchers to prosper in their homeland, in Hungary. “In other words, researchers should not opt for a research career abroad out of necessity but should go abroad, gather as much experience as possible and should then come home when their academic career has reached its peak”, Mr Navracsics said. The Deputy Prime Minister believes that Hungary can only have a future if it is able to present quality work; a small but talented nation can only find its way to the top in the keen international competition if the Government supports this work with its policy decisions.

The Minister of Public Administration and Justice said that a number of changes were required in recent periods in the field of the regulation and operation of higher education and the regulation of academic research in order to maintain Hungary’s competitive edge.

The Deputy Prime Minister highlighted that knowledge had become international in the past ten to twenty years which represents a challenge in a linguistic and cultural sense; in particular, for the nations of Eastern-Europe who had previously lived in complete linguistic isolation for forty years. The other challenge for the academic world is of a financial nature; we are unable to present international results even in the less financially intensive research areas without the availability of certain conditions.

(Prime Minister’s Office)