Did Katalin Cseh and Anna Donáth, the two members of the European Parliament from the Hungarian Momentum party manage to expel Hungary from the Erasmus Programme? No, that's not true: The European Union ceased to support the Erasmus grants of Hungarian students and researchers after an EU Council decision in December 2022.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on January 23, 2024. It began (translated from Hungarian to English by Lead Stories staff):
Momentum has once again proven that it works against the interests of Hungarians! Katalin Cseh and Anna Donáth, two Members of the European Parliament of the globalist party with only a few percentage of voters, managed to exclude our country from the Erasmus programme.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Jan 29 15:19:07 2024 UTC)
The video discusses the "REPORT on the implementation of the Erasmus+ programme 2021-2027" (archived here), adopted as a European Parliament resolution on January 16, 2024. As a resolution, it does not have legal consequences nor can it expel Hungarian students from the Erasmus+ program.
The video criticizes Cseh and Donath for initiating an amendment to the resolution. The amendment (archived here), which passed the plenary session, urged the Hungarian government to comply with EU laws so Hungarian students can benefit from Erasmus+ funds again.
Calls on the Hungarian Government to comply immediately with the rule of law and EU values and to put in place the necessary reforms so that Hungarian students, teachers and researchers may benefit from the Erasmus+ programme and contribute to the broader goals of European educational and research cooperation
An EU Council decision (archived here) in December 2022 "prohibits to enter into new legal commitments with Hungarian public interest trusts and entities maintained by them when implementing the EU budget in direct and indirect management. This measure aims to protect the Union budget from possible conflicts of interest and to ensure the transparent use of EU support by public interest trusts." This affects the Erasmus contracts of 21 Hungarian universities, which the government gave to public interest trust in recent years. The government decided (archived here) to pay the Erasmus grants of students and teachers in 2024 from the national budget.
