The annual conference of our sister organisation south of Hungary’s border, the Association of Hungarian Economists in Vojvodina, was held on 18 March 2019 in the beautiful boardroom of the town hall of Subotica (Serbia). The organisation had been established in 2009 with active contribution by the Association of Hungarian Economists in Romania. This year’s conference was notable for an especially gratifying event: the handover of Pallas Athene Scholarships for Excellence to 26 Hungarian students of economics from Vojvodina. The scholarships were presented by Zoltán Dubéczi, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the scholarship foundation.

In this scheme, students with the best grades get HUF 30,000 a month for a 10-month period. Outstanding university students in further cities (Miercurea Ciuc, Cluj Napoca and Oradea in Romania, and Berehove in the Ukraine) will also receive scholarships and support from the Pallas Athene Foundation in June.

The Pallas Athene Scholarships of Excellence had been launched in 2018 upon an initiative by the Hungarian Economic Association, based on the example of the Scholarships of Excellence program of the National Bank of Hungary. The objective is to provide financial support to talented Hungarian students living beyond the country’s borders. The first scholarship certificates had been issued to 48 students of the Selye János University in Komarno, Slovakia, in November 2018. The Pallas Athene Scholarships for Excellents are ultimately aimed at increasing the number of Hungarian nationals studying economics in foreign tertiary education institutions, and increasing the chance that they will stay in their homelands.