Hungarian President Cleared of Plagiarizing Bulgarian Researcher

Chairman of the IOC Sport and Environment, the President of Hungary Pal Schmitt at a press conference 02 March 2012 in Wroclaw, Poland. EPA/BGNES

Hungarian President Pal Schmitt has been cleared of plagiarizing his 1992 doctoral dissertation, even though he copied many pages from other sources, including Bulgarian researcher Nikolai Georgiev.

According to international media, a five-member committee at Budapest's Semmelweis University says academics at the then-independent University of Physical Education should have noticed and called attention to similarities between large parts of Schmitt's thesis analyzing the Olympic Games and works by other authors.

In January, it emerged that a large part of Schmitt's dissertation, written in 1992, appears to be an exact translation of Georgiev's Analyse du programme olympique (des Jeux d'Olympiade), written in 1992.

A total of 180 of the 215-page dissertation of the Hungarian president was copied from Georgiev, the HGV weekly had said.

Pal Schmitt, 69, has been President of Hungary since 2010. He served as an ambassador during the 1990s, and was a Vice President of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2010. After briefly serving as Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary in 2010, Schmitt was elected as President of Hungary in a 263 to 59 vote in the Parliament. Schmitt is a supporter of the second cabinet of Viktor Orban.

Schmitt was a successful fencer in his youth, winning two gold medals at the Summer Olympics. He later became the Chief of Protocol of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and presided over the World Olympians Association between 1999 and 2007.

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