Hungarian President Pal Schmitt has been stripped of his doctorate because of plagiarism. He has denied any wrondoing and said he would not resign.

Hungarian President Pal Schmitt has been stripped of his doctorate because of plagiarism. He has denied any wrondoing and said he would not resign. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

Hungary's President Pal Schmitt has been stripped of his 1992 doctorate title for plagiarism, as opposition parties call for his resignation.

"The [university] senate has withdrawn the title by 33 votes to four," the rector of Budapest's Semmelweis University, Tivadar Tulassay, announced.

"The doctorate thesis did not comply with either scientific or ethical methods," he said.

The university earlier said that it planned to launch proceedings aimed at stripping the Hungarian president of his doctorate title, even though he had been cleared of wrongdoing.

On Tuesday, an investigative committee from the university said Mr Schmitt had copied large parts of his thesis on the history and evolution of modern-era Olympic games.

"The doctorate is based on a word-for-word translation on a significant and unusual scale," it said, adding that the translation was of "mediocre quality".

However, the committee ruled that the text complied with requirements at the time and put the blame on the university for not noticing.

Critics sharply condemned the conclusions of the committee, headed by an appointee of Prime Minister Viktor Orban who was recently named vice-president of the Olympic Committee.

Mr Schmitt is a close ally of Mr Orban and opposition parties on called for his resignation in the wake of the committee's ruling.

"The doctorate council came to the sole possible conclusion, with which it saved the honour of Hungarian science," said Socialist Party leader Attila Mesterhazy, after the council said it would begin proceedings to strip Mr Schmitt of his title.

There has been no reaction yet from Mr Schmitt or the government.

Weekly HVG reported in January that the "majority" of Mr Schmitt's thesis was a "word-for-word translation" of a text written in French in the 1980s by late Bulgarian sports expert and diplomat Nikolai Georgiev.

Soon after, respected news website index.hu said that a further 17 pages of Mr Schmitt's conclusions had been word-for-word translations of a dissertation by German professor Klaus Heinemann, written in English in 1991.

Last year, German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned after his doctorate was rescinded for plagiarism, leading to other public figures' academic achievements being scrutinised.

Agence France-Presse