Petersburg European University can be evicted

St. Petersburg may abandon one of its largest investment projects-a project to adapt to modern educational needs of the building of the European University-the Palace of Kushelev-Bezborodko on Gagarinskaya Street. This was reported by the Radio Liberty correspondent.

Rector of the European University in St. Petersburg Oleg Kharkhordin

Rector Oleg Kharkhordin said that he did not see the political component in the current situation, but he could not help but alert that back in July, a group of initiative citizens sent a large number of complaints to the auditing bodies. At the end of December, the Committee of Property Relations sent a notification to the European University of termination of the building lease agreement. The audit revealed that plastic windows are installed on the palace facades, another claim concerns the construction of several temporary partitions and extensions in the yard, although all this was made by the former inhabitants of the building back in the 70s of the last century. It is known that these violations are not at risk for the cultural values of the palace and in the process of adaptation of the building would be automatically corrected.

Rosobrnadzor also has complaints about the European University-this is the lack of accreditation for several teachers and the insufficient percentage of practitioners in political science. Nevertheless, the university is prohibited from recruiting new students, as a result of which it incurred large losses.

The leadership of the university believes that the comments of the Committee of Property Relations and Rosobrnadzor are incomparable with those consequences that may entail attempts to deprive the university of the building and license.

University rector Oleg Kharkhordin emphasizes that the European University enjoys support at the President and Government level. Back in 2015, Vladimir Putin instructed the governor of St. Petersburg and the Minister of Education to help the university in the restructuring of the building, and also ordered to assign one of the new halls the name of the former mayor Anatoly Sobchak. However, now, due to the claims of the city authorities and Rosobrnadzor, the European University cannot maintain a full-fledged educational process and is on the verge of survival.