Chapter XVI: Építési és Közlekedési Minisztérium (Ministry of Construction and Transport)

Overview

Chapter XVI funds the Építési és Közlekedési Minisztérium (Ministry of Construction and Transport, ÉKM) and the appropriations it manages. The 2026 envelope is 1,712,429.0 millió Ft of expenditure against 118,074.0 millió Ft of own revenue — a net call on the general budget of 1,594,355.0 millió Ft. By size this is one of the largest spending chapters in the budget, and almost the whole of it is one thing: payments to operate, maintain, and provide passenger service on the road and rail networks.

The chapter has three structural layers. The first is the ministry’s own administration and a transport museum — together 63,415.4 millió Ft, under 4% of the chapter. The second is the fejezeti kezelésű előirányzatok (chapter-managed appropriations), 306,661.6 millió Ft of road maintenance, railway capital projects, water-utility and industrial-park infrastructure, and a cluster of heritage and commemorative-year programmes. The third, and by far the largest, is the központi kezelésű előirányzatok (centrally-managed appropriations), 1,342,351.5 millió Ft — 78% of the chapter — which is where the network-operating money sits: motorway availability payments, the M5/M6 PPP availability fees, the cost-reimbursement of rail infrastructure and rail passenger service, the cost-reimbursement and compensation of bus passenger service, and the toll-collection system.

The analytical task here is not the ministry — it is small — but the 1.3 billió Ft of payments to network operators. Two distinctions organise the chapter. The first is between the network itself and the contractual form through which it is financed: a road or a railway track is durable infrastructure with a genuine network element, but a 35-year availability-fee concession or a euro-denominated PPP is a financing arrangement, and the financing arrangement is contestable even where the infrastructure is not. The second is between operating the network and subsidising the fare: the cost of keeping a railway track open is a different question from the cost of holding a passenger ticket below the cost of carriage, and the budget combines both under the neutral word “költségtérítés” (cost reimbursement).

A note on the budget table: the ÉKM administration line carries a 38,891.0 millió Ft entry in the operating-revenue column. That revenue is recorded under the chapter’s revenue total, not the expenditure total; the administration’s expenditure line items (personnel, contributions, operating costs, beneficiary payments, other operating, investment, renovation) sum to 60,705.9 millió Ft. With the museum and both appropriation blocks, the chapter’s expenditure line items sum to the budget document’s stated total of 1,712,429.0 millió Ft, and the revenue items sum to the stated 118,074.0 millió Ft.

Expenditure Analysis

Építési és Közlekedési Minisztérium igazgatása (Ministry of Construction and Transport — Administration)

• Current allocation: 60,705.9 millió Ft (Personnel 20,204.0; Employer contributions and social-contribution tax 2,834.6; Operating costs 14,594.1; Beneficiaries’ cash benefits 0.4; Other operating-purpose expenditure 22,920.3; Investment 146.7; Renovation 5.8)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: The ÉKM is a line ministry: it sets construction and transport regulation, administers the building code, and is the contracting authority for the network-operating payments that make up the bulk of this chapter. Building rules and the rules of the road are rule-of-law infrastructure — knowable, enforceable standards through which property is developed and traffic is ordered — and the administration of that rule-making is a legitimate state function in the frame. The line is kept. Keep does not mean exempt from scrutiny, and two features of this line warrant it. First, the “Egyéb működési célú kiadások” (other operating-purpose expenditure) line of 22,920.3 millió Ft is larger than the ministry’s entire personnel allocation of 20,204.0 millió Ft. A line ministry whose principal input is the time of qualified administrators and engineers should be payroll-dominated; an “other operating” line that exceeds payroll is a transfer-and-grant channel folded into the administration title, not the cost of running the ministry, and the budget data gives no breakdown of what it funds. Second, the ministry records 38,891.0 millió Ft of own operating revenue against this title — a substantial figure for a ministry administration, most plausibly fees and charges for the regulatory and licensing acts the ministry performs. The recommendation is a zero-based review of the 22,920.3 millió Ft “other operating” line at the next budget cycle: the genuine cost of administering construction and transport regulation is the payroll, the contributions, and the dologi kiadások; whatever the “other operating” line transfers should be identified and classified on its own merits, not kept by association with the ministry.
• Transition mechanism: No transition of the administrative function. Subject the 22,920.3 millió Ft “other operating-purpose expenditure” line to a zero-based review: identify each component, classify transfers on their own merits, and either fold genuine administrative cost into the dologi line or reclassify the rest.
• Affected groups: None directly. The ministry’s regulatory and administrative staff continue; the review affects whatever the “other operating” line currently transfers, not the ministry’s establishment.

Magyar Műszaki és Közlekedési Múzeum (Hungarian Museum of Science and Transport)

• Current allocation: 2,709.5 millió Ft (Personnel 1,200.7; Employer contributions and social-contribution tax 156.7; Operating costs 966.6; Investment 305.9; Renovation 79.6)
• Classification: Nominal Freeze
• Rationale: The Magyar Műszaki és Közlekedési Múzeum is the national museum of technology and transport — a collection-holding institution with a custodial mandate over historic locomotives, vehicles, and technical artefacts. A museum is not a rights-protection function and not a constitutional precondition; on the frame’s first questions it is a candidate for voluntary financing — admission charges, membership, sponsorship, and the donor and bequest base on which museums everywhere draw — and the line records 45.0 millió Ft of own revenue, roughly 1.7% of its cost, which indicates how little of the institution is currently carried by the people who use it. What holds this line short of a phase-out is the custodial element. A national technical collection is a finite, already-assembled stock of irreplaceable objects; the conservation of locomotives and vehicles already in public hands is a bounded mandate, not an expanding programme, and an abrupt cut risks dispersing or degrading a collection that cannot be reconstituted. The line is held at its nominal level. Real-terms erosion at typical inflation reduces its real share by roughly 20-25% over a decade without an active decision, which is the appropriate trajectory for a bounded custodial function whose operating and programming side should over time shift toward admission, membership, and sponsorship financing. The freeze is the analytically honest classification: not a core state function, but holding an irreplaceable public collection, with a standing expectation that the user-financed share rises from its current 1.7%.
• Transition mechanism: Hold the allocation at 2,709.5 millió Ft in nominal terms. No active reduction; real-terms erosion at ~2.5% inflation does the work. Direct the museum to raise the share of cost carried by admission, membership, and sponsorship over the freeze period.
• Affected groups: None adversely. The museum’s staff and the collection continue; visitors and members carry a rising share of the operating cost as the nominal freeze erodes the tax-financed share.

Közúthálózat fenntartás és működtetés (Public road network maintenance and operation)

• Current allocation: 107,500.0 millió Ft (operating; revenue 2,000.0)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds the maintenance and operation of the ordinary public road network — the non-motorway roads carried by Magyar Közút — covering surface repair, signage, winter service, and routine upkeep. A road, once built, is durable physical infrastructure with a genuine network character: it cannot be unbundled into separately-priced competing segments the way generation or retail can be split from a transmission grid, and its maintenance secures the usability of an asset the public already owns. Keeping a network the state owns in serviceable condition is a defensible state function in the frame, and the line is classified Keep. The classification is on the function, not the delivery mechanism: keeping the asset maintained does not require that the maintenance work itself be done in-house, and competitive tendering of resurfacing and upkeep contracts is the discipline that keeps the cost honest. The line also records 2,000.0 millió Ft of own revenue. Keep here means: maintain the network; tender the work.
• Transition mechanism: None on the function. Recommend that maintenance and resurfacing work be competitively tendered rather than directed to a single operator, and that the budget show the maintenance cost separately from any capital-renewal element.
• Affected groups: None adversely. Road users rely on a maintained network.

Országos közúthálózat felújítása (National road network renewal)

• Current allocation: 20,000.0 millió Ft (Operating 12.0; Investment 19,988.0)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds capital renewal of the national road network — the rebuilding, as opposed to routine maintenance, of road surfaces and structures. Like the maintenance line above, this is spending on durable infrastructure the public already owns, and renewing a road that has reached the end of its surface life is the capital counterpart of keeping it maintained. The function is kept. The same delivery qualification applies, and more sharply: a capital renewal line is exactly where procurement discipline matters most, because the work is lumpy, contract-based, and let to a small number of large contractors. The case for keeping the road network in serviceable condition does not extend to whatever margin a non-competitive procurement adds to the cost of doing so. The line is Keep on the function, with the firm qualification that renewal contracts are competitively tendered and the budget distinguishes genuine renewal from capacity expansion.
• Transition mechanism: None on the function. Competitive tendering of renewal contracts; budget transparency separating renewal from new capacity.
• Affected groups: None adversely. Road users rely on a renewed network.

Közúti közlekedésbiztonsági és környezetvédelmi feladatok (Road traffic safety and environmental tasks)

• Current allocation: 3,338.0 millió Ft (Operating 3,318.0; Investment 20.0; revenue 3,338.0)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds road traffic safety and related environmental tasks. The notable feature is that the line is fully self-financing: it records 3,338.0 millió Ft of own revenue against 3,338.0 millió Ft of expenditure — the activity is carried by the fees and charges it generates, not by the general taxpayer. Traffic safety regulation and enforcement is part of the rule-of-the-road function, and a self-financing line that imposes no net call on the budget is the least contentious item in the chapter. It is kept.
• Transition mechanism: None.
• Affected groups: None.

Tengelysúlymérő-rendszer üzemeltetése (Axle-load weighing system operation)

• Current allocation: 7,154.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds the operation of the axle-load weighing system — the fixed and mobile weighing infrastructure that enforces vehicle weight limits on the road network. Overweight heavy goods vehicles inflict disproportionate, cumulative damage on road surfaces and structures: the damage a vehicle does rises steeply with axle load, so a small number of overloaded vehicles can impose a large share of the maintenance cost that every road user and taxpayer then funds. Weight-limit enforcement is the mechanism that makes the hauliers who cause the damage bear the limit rather than passing the cost to the maintenance budget. The line is a genuine rule-enforcement function tied directly to the protection of an asset the public owns, and it is kept. As with other lines in the chapter, Keep does not preclude an operating-efficiency review of the system’s running cost.
• Transition mechanism: None. Operating-efficiency review of the system’s running cost at the budget cycle.
• Affected groups: None adversely. Hauliers operating within weight limits are unaffected; the system enforces the limit on those who exceed it.

Légiközlekedési feladatok (Aviation tasks)

• Current allocation: 594.1 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds aviation-sector tasks at the ministry level — the regulatory, oversight, and coordination functions associated with civil aviation. Aviation safety regulation is a protective function: the irreversibility of the harm in an aviation failure makes the enforcement of airworthiness and operating standards a matter the frame treats as a legitimate protective state function rather than a discretionary programme. The line is small and routine. It is kept.
• Transition mechanism: None.
• Affected groups: None.

Víziközlekedési feladatok (Water transport tasks)

• Current allocation: 600.1 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds water-transport tasks — the regulatory and coordination functions for river navigation, principally on the Danube and Tisza. As with aviation, the safety-regulation element is a protective function, and the line is small and routine. It is kept.
• Transition mechanism: None.
• Affected groups: None.

Közlekedési koordinációs és egyéb feladatok (Transport coordination and other tasks)

• Current allocation: 1,030.4 millió Ft (Operating 951.4; Investment 79.0)
• Classification: Nominal Freeze
• Rationale: This line funds “transport coordination and other tasks” — a residual administrative line covering coordination activity that does not fall under the modal lines above. The “and other tasks” framing and the absence of a breakdown make this a catch-all line rather than a specified function: it is not a rights-protection function and not a discretionary grant pool of identifiable size, but a small administrative residual whose content the budget data does not disclose. The line is held at its nominal level. The administrative cost of itemising and separately classifying a line this size would exceed any saving, and a nominal freeze lets real-terms erosion reduce its share over a decade while a future budget cycle establishes what the “other tasks” component actually funds.
• Transition mechanism: Hold at 1,030.4 millió Ft in nominal terms; real-terms erosion at ~2.5% inflation does the work. Itemise the “other tasks” component at the next budget cycle.
• Affected groups: None.

Fenntarthatósági és modernizációs vasúti fejlesztések (Sustainability and modernisation railway developments)

• Current allocation: 21,397.8 millió Ft (Operating 12.0; Investment 21,385.8)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds capital investment in the railway network — track modernisation and renewal under a “sustainability and modernisation” heading. The railway track is durable network infrastructure with a genuine network character: a single set of rails between two points cannot be replicated competitively, and the track is the part of the rail system where the network argument genuinely holds, as distinct from the contestable elements (passenger-service operation, freight haulage, retail). Capital renewal of track the public owns is spending on a durable asset, and the function is kept. The classification carries the qualifications that apply to every large capital line in this chapter: this is a finite build, not a recurring entitlement; the budget should show the capital programme declining toward a steady-state renewal rate rather than rolling the envelope forward; and railway capital procurement is a domain where competitive tendering is the discipline that keeps the cost honest. The function is Keep; the delivery is to be tendered and the line tracked as a finite programme.
• Transition mechanism: None on the function. Competitive tendering of railway capital contracts; budget transparency tracking the programme as finite rather than perpetual.
• Affected groups: None adversely. Rail users rely on a modernised network.

Nemzetközi szerződésen alapuló vasúti fejlesztések (Treaty-based railway developments)

• Current allocation: 44,511.0 millió Ft (Operating 11.0; Investment 44,500.0)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This is the largest railway capital line in the chapter — 44,511.0 millió Ft — and the budget names its basis explicitly: railway developments that rest on an international treaty. The treaty basis is the load-bearing fact. The classical-liberal frame treats treaty commitments as binding while they bind: where the Hungarian state has contracted, in an international agreement, to carry out a defined railway development, honouring that commitment is itself a rule-of-law obligation, and the budget line that funds it is the discharge of a contracted liability rather than a discretionary allocation. The line is kept on that ground, and on the same ground as the other railway-track capital lines — track is genuine network infrastructure. The recommendation that attaches is procedural rather than classificatory: the specific treaty and the specific development it commits Hungary to should be identified and the line’s horizon set by the treaty’s terms, so that a future budget cycle treats the line as the finite discharge of a defined commitment, not as a permanent railway-capital channel.
• Transition mechanism: None on the function. Identify the governing treaty and set the line’s horizon by the treaty’s defined scope; track the line as the discharge of a finite commitment.
• Affected groups: None adversely. Rail users and the treaty counterparty rely on the committed development.

Víziközmű-fejlesztések (Water-utility developments)

• Current allocation: 27,264.1 millió Ft (Operating 3,948.9; Investment 23,315.2)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds capital investment in water utilities — the development and renewal of water-supply and wastewater infrastructure. The water-supply and sewerage network is the textbook case of genuine network infrastructure: a single set of pipes serving a settlement is not replicable competitively, the asset is durable, and the consequence of failure — contaminated supply, untreated discharge — is an irreversible-harm question rather than a consumer-preference question. Investment in the network the public owns is a defensible state function, and the line is kept. Two qualifications attach. First, the recurring debate in the Hungarian water sector is not whether the network should be maintained but whether the tariff charged to users covers the cost of maintaining it: where a regulated tariff is held below the cost of carriage, the shortfall reappears as a capital-subsidy line like this one, and the honest reform is to bring the user tariff toward cost-reflective levels so that the people who use the water carry the cost of the pipes, with the network element regulated and a defined support mechanism for genuine hardship rather than a universal cap. Second, as with every capital line in the chapter, the procurement should be competitively tendered. The function is Keep; the financing mix between user tariff and capital subsidy is the open question.
• Transition mechanism: None on the function. Recommend moving the user tariff toward cost-reflective levels over the medium term, with the network element regulated and hardship support targeted rather than universal; competitive tendering of capital contracts.
• Affected groups: None adversely in the near term. Over the medium term, a move toward cost-reflective tariffs shifts cost from the general taxpayer to water users, with hardship cases protected by a targeted mechanism.

Ipari parki és térségi infrastruktúra fejlesztési feladatok (Industrial-park and regional infrastructure development tasks)

• Current allocation: 40,226.9 millió Ft (Operating 1,627.8; Investment 38,599.1)
• Classification: Phase-Out (4 years)
• Rationale: This line funds the development of industrial parks and regional infrastructure — 40,226.9 millió Ft, almost entirely capital investment. The classification turns on what the spending builds and for whom. Where the line funds genuine general-access infrastructure — a road or a utility connection that serves a region irrespective of which firms occupy it — that element belongs with the network-renewal lines above. But the “industrial park” framing describes something more specific: the state developing serviced sites, with prepared utility connections and access, that are then occupied by particular firms. That is a state-financed transfer of a development cost that a market land-and-property sector prices and supplies on its own. A serviced industrial site has a buyer — the firm that occupies it — and the value of the servicing is capturable in the price of the site; when the state funds the servicing from general taxation, the visible result is a region with prepared sites, and the unseen cost is the taxpayer who funded a development whose benefit is concentrated on the occupying firms and the landowners whose sites were serviced at public expense. A property and land-development sector that prices and supplies serviced commercial sites already operates; the case for routing the cost through the budget rests on the assumption that the state allocates development capital to the right sites better than the firms that will actually use them — and the firms, who bear the consequence of a badly-located site, hold information about demand that no central allocator can assemble. The phase-out horizon is four years because in-flight projects — sites part-developed against a committed budget — must be completed in an orderly way rather than stranded, and the protected party is the counterparties to existing development contracts. The general-infrastructure element of the line, to the extent the budget data later separates it, is reclassified Keep and folded into the regional road and utility programmes; what phases out is the industrial-park site-servicing transfer.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 4 years, linear glide. The protected party is the counterparties to development contracts already let — the contractors and the regions with part-completed projects. Year 1 honours and completes in-flight commitments and disburses three-quarters of the line; Years 2-4 wind the new-project pipeline down to zero. Net saving rises from 10,056.7 millió Ft in Year 1 to the full 40,226.9 millió Ft from Year 4. Genuine general-access regional infrastructure is migrated to the road and utility renewal lines; industrial-site servicing is left to the land and property market.
• Affected groups: Contractors and regional authorities with development contracts already in progress, protected by the commitment-honouring Year 1. Firms that would have occupied state-serviced sites in future years instead transact with a land and property market that prices and supplies serviced commercial sites — the same outcome through a priced transaction rather than a tax-financed transfer.

Építésügyi ágazati feladatok (Construction-sector tasks)

• Current allocation: 452.0 millió Ft (Operating 393.5; Investment 58.5)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds construction-sector tasks at the ministry level — the regulatory, standard-setting, and oversight activity associated with the building code. A knowable, enforceable building standard is rule-of-law infrastructure: it is the framework within which property is developed and within which a buyer can rely on what was built. The line is small and routine. It is kept.
• Transition mechanism: None.
• Affected groups: None.

Kulturális örökségvédelmi feladatok támogatása (Support for cultural heritage protection tasks)

• Current allocation: 4,066.3 millió Ft (Operating 3,275.7; Investment 790.6)
• Classification: Nominal Freeze
• Rationale: This line funds cultural-heritage protection tasks — the listing, monitoring, and conservation oversight of protected buildings and monuments. Heritage protection sits at the boundary of the frame. The regulatory element — the legal listing of a building and the enforcement of the restriction on altering it — is a rule-of-law function: a heritage listing is a defined, knowable encumbrance on a property, and administering that register is a modest administrative activity. The grant-and-support element — the discretionary funding of conservation work — has the structure of subjective allocation, and conservation of privately-owned heritage property has a substantial voluntary funding base in foundations, trusts, and the owners whose property values rise with the conservation. The line is held at its nominal level: the regulatory function is bounded and self-limiting, and a nominal freeze reduces the discretionary-grant share in real terms over a decade without an abrupt cut to either component, while a future budget cycle separates the register-administration cost from the conservation-grant pool.
• Transition mechanism: Hold at 4,066.3 millió Ft in nominal terms; real-terms erosion at ~2.5% inflation does the work. Separate the regulatory register-administration cost from the conservation-grant pool at the next budget cycle.
• Affected groups: None directly. Owners of listed property rely on a maintained heritage register; conservation-grant recipients face a slowly eroding real allocation.

Budavári ingatlanok üzemeltetésének támogatása (Support for the operation of Buda Castle quarter properties)

• Current allocation: 8,370.6 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Phase-Out (5 years)
• Rationale: This line funds the operation of state-owned properties in the Budavári Palotanegyed (Buda Castle Palace quarter), managed by the Várkapitányság Nonprofit Zrt.¹ The reconstruction of the Palace quarter is a multi-year capital programme; this line is the separate recurring cost of operating the buildings once delivered — caretaking, utilities, security, and grounds maintenance of the reconstructed palace buildings and the public spaces around them. The classification turns on what the recurring operating cost is for. Some of these buildings have a defined state use: the reconstructed József Archduke Palace is to house the Alkotmánybíróság (Constitutional Court),¹ and the operating cost of a building that houses a constitutional institution properly belongs with that institution’s own chapter, where it is funded as part of the cost of the institution. The remainder is the operating cost of a heritage property complex held for cultural, ceremonial, and tourism use — and that is not a state function the frame keeps. A palace quarter with museums, exhibition space, and public grounds is a cultural and tourism asset, and a cultural-tourism asset of this scale has its own revenue base: admission, venue hire, commercial concessions, catering, and event income are how comparable heritage estates carry their operating cost. Funding the operation of the quarter from general taxation, with no visible revenue line, means the visitor who uses the site and the taxpayer who never visits pay the same way for it. The line is phased out over five years: the operating cost attributable to buildings housing state institutions is transferred to those institutions’ chapters, and the remainder is migrated onto the admission, venue-hire, and commercial-concession revenue the site can generate. Five years is the realistic horizon because the reconstruction programme is itself completing across this period¹ and the operating model — which buildings are institutional, which are cultural-commercial — cannot be settled until the buildings are delivered and in use.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 5 years, linear glide. The protected party is the operating establishment of the Várkapitányság and the orderly running of the quarter during the reconstruction completion period. Year 1 holds the line while the institutional-versus-cultural split is established; Years 2-5 transfer the institutional-building operating cost to the relevant institutional chapters and migrate the cultural-tourism operating cost onto admission, venue-hire, and concession revenue. Net saving to this chapter rises from 1,674.1 millió Ft in Year 1 to the full 8,370.6 millió Ft from Year 5 — with the institutional share reappearing as a (smaller, scrutinised) cost in the institutional chapters rather than disappearing.
• Affected groups: The Várkapitányság’s operating establishment, protected by the five-year glide and by the transfer of the institutional-building operations to other chapters rather than closure. Visitors to the Castle quarter, who under the migrated model carry the operating cost of the cultural element through admission and venue-hire charges. State institutions housed in the quarter, whose chapters absorb the operating cost of their own premises.

Kulturális értékmegőrző beruházások (Cultural value-preservation capital investments)

• Current allocation: 3,641.8 millió Ft (Operating 11.8; Investment 3,630.0)
• Classification: Nominal Freeze
• Rationale: This line funds capital investment in cultural value-preservation — the conservation and restoration of heritage buildings and cultural assets. As with the heritage-protection line above, the conservation of heritage property is at the boundary of the frame: there is no rights-protection function and no constitutional precondition, and conservation has a genuine voluntary funding base, but the assets in question are a finite, already-existing stock whose loss would be irreversible. The line is held at its nominal level. A bounded conservation mandate over an existing stock of heritage assets is the kind of finite, self-limiting function the nominal freeze fits: real-terms erosion reduces the tax-financed share over a decade, and the conservation of privately-beneficial heritage property should over time draw more on the owners and foundations that the value accrues to.
• Transition mechanism: Hold at 3,641.8 millió Ft in nominal terms; real-terms erosion at ~2.5% inflation does the work.
• Affected groups: None directly. Conservation-investment recipients face a slowly eroding real allocation.

Mohács 500 emlékév és kapcsolódó fejlesztések (Mohács 500 commemorative year and related developments)

• Current allocation: 7,229.3 millió Ft (Operating 3.7; Investment 7,225.6)
• Classification: Immediate Cut
• Rationale: This line funds the “Mohács 500” commemorative year and the developments attached to it — the 500th anniversary, in 2026, of the 1526 Battle of Mohács. A commemorative-year programme is a discretionary allocation in the most direct sense: it is a sum of money, decided by political officeholders, to mark an anniversary, with the recipients of the “related developments” — construction projects, events, commemorative works — chosen at official discretion. There is no rights-protection function here, no constitutional precondition, and no dependency chain tying any citizen’s life plan to the line; what it funds is the public marking of a historical date, and the “kapcsolódó fejlesztések” (related developments) framing means the bulk of the 7,229.3 millió Ft is capital spending whose connection to the anniversary is the occasion for the allocation rather than an independent infrastructure need. A commemoration that a society genuinely wants is exactly the kind of activity a voluntary sector — historical associations, municipalities, churches, cultural foundations, sponsors — funds and organises; the case for 7,229.3 millió Ft of compulsory financing routed through official discretion is weak. For a worker at the roughly 540,000 Ft median monthly gross wage², the commemorative-year lines in this chapter together absorb on the order of 1,500-1,700 Ft a year in tax — not a large sum per household, but the size of the line is not the point: an anniversary marked at official discretion is a discretionary allocation whether it is large or small, and the principle scales. The line is eliminated in the 2026 cycle. Genuine infrastructure projects bundled under the “related developments” heading, if any are independently warranted, are reclassified into the relevant infrastructure chapters on their own merits; the commemorative element is not tax-financed.
• Transition mechanism: Eliminate in the 2026 budget cycle. Any “related development” that is a genuine, independently-warranted infrastructure project is reclassified into the relevant chapter and justified there; the commemorative-event element is left to the voluntary and municipal sector. The capital-purpose framing means no permanent personnel are attached; the saving is the full 7,229.3 millió Ft.
• Affected groups: The organisations and contractors that would have received commemorative-year funding. The marking of the anniversary continues to whatever extent historical associations, municipalities, churches, and sponsors choose to fund and organise it.

Történeti értékű kertörökség gondozása (Care of historic garden heritage)

• Current allocation: 800.4 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Nominal Freeze
• Rationale: This line funds the care of historic garden heritage — the upkeep of protected historic gardens, parks, and designed landscapes. As with the other heritage lines, this is a bounded custodial function over an existing, finite stock of heritage landscapes rather than an expanding programme, and it is small. The line is held at its nominal level: the administrative cost of separately reclassifying a line this size would exceed any saving, and a nominal freeze reduces its real share over a decade while the custodial function continues.
• Transition mechanism: Hold at 800.4 millió Ft in nominal terms; real-terms erosion at ~2.5% inflation does the work.
• Affected groups: None.

Kulturális értékmegőrző feladatok és programok (Cultural value-preservation tasks and programmes)

• Current allocation: 2,584.8 millió Ft (Operating 192.8; Investment 2,392.0)
• Classification: Phase-Out (3 years)
• Rationale: This line funds “cultural value-preservation tasks and programmes” — and unlike the conservation-investment lines above, which fund work on a defined stock of heritage assets, the “tasks and programmes” framing with no breakdown is the signature of a discretionary grant pool. The budget line names no recipients, no programme content, and no statutory formula; what it funds is decided by the allocating official. That is subjective allocation by a political officeholder: the benefit is concentrated on whichever cultural organisations and programmes are chosen, the cost is spread across all taxpayers, and the recipients acquire a structural interest in the line’s continuation independent of the value of any particular grant. Cultural programming is among the activities with the strongest voluntary funding base — membership, ticket revenue, sponsorship, patron and foundation giving — and the case for a discretionary tax-financed pool, as distinct from the bounded conservation of a defined heritage stock, is weak. The line is phased out over three years: current recipients have planned activity against an expected grant, and the glide gives them a full cycle to shift onto membership, ticket, and sponsorship financing.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 3 years, linear glide. The protected party is the cultural organisations that have planned current activity around the grant. Year 1 honours commitments and disburses two-thirds of the line; Year 2 disburses one-third; Year 3 the pool is zero. Net saving is 861.6 millió Ft in Year 1, 1,723.2 millió Ft in Year 2, and the full 2,584.8 millió Ft from Year 3.
• Affected groups: Cultural organisations and programmes currently funded by the pool, given three years to replace the grant with the membership, ticket, sponsorship, and patron financing that sustains cultural activity in practice.

Visegrád 700 emlékév és kapcsolódó fejlesztések (Visegrád 700 commemorative year and related developments)

• Current allocation: 600.0 millió Ft (Operating 0.4; Investment 599.6)
• Classification: Immediate Cut
• Rationale: This line funds the “Visegrád 700” commemorative year and its related developments. The analysis is the same as for the Mohács 500 line: a commemorative-year programme is a discretionary allocation to mark an anniversary, with recipients chosen at official discretion, no rights-protection function, no constitutional precondition, and no dependency chain. The line is smaller, but the size of a line is not the criterion — the mechanism is, and the mechanism is identical. The line is eliminated in the 2026 cycle; the marking of the anniversary is left to the historical associations, municipalities, and sponsors that fund such commemorations voluntarily.
• Transition mechanism: Eliminate in the 2026 budget cycle. The capital-purpose framing means no permanent personnel are attached; the saving is the full 600.0 millió Ft.
• Affected groups: The organisations and contractors that would have received commemorative-year funding. The commemoration continues to whatever extent the voluntary and municipal sector chooses to fund it.

Központosított társasági szolgáltatások támogatása (Support for centralised corporate services)

• Current allocation: 3,800.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Phase-Out (3 years)
• Rationale: This line funds “centralised corporate services” — the shared back-office functions (IT, finance and accounting, procurement, administration) consolidated for the state-owned companies in the ministry’s portfolio. Recent organisational changes in the portfolio have moved exactly these functions — IT, finance, accounting, procurement, and administrative work — into a shared service centre.¹ The classification turns on what a shared service centre is. Back-office services — accounting, payroll processing, IT support, procurement administration — are ordinary commercial services with a deep, competitive private market: they are exactly what business-process outsourcing firms and accountancy and IT providers supply, at a price, to companies across the economy. Consolidating them into a state-funded centre does not create a capacity the market lacks; it relocates a priced service into a tax-financed line. A state-owned company that needs accounting and IT support can buy it — from a competitive market that prices the service and bears the consequence of doing it badly — and the cost then sits, correctly, with the company that uses the service rather than as a separate 3,800.0 millió Ft subsidy line in the ministry’s chapter. The phase-out horizon is three years: the protected party is the staff of the shared service centre, a group with directly marketable skills, and the realistic transition is for the state-owned companies to procure these services and for the centre’s staff to move into the private business-process sector.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 3 years (a 24-month severance-with-overlap bridge plus the year in which the line reaches fiscal zero). The shared service centre is a personnel-heavy back-office operation; on the structure of comparable shared service centres the payroll component is the dominant share of the operating cost. The chapter shows a single transfer figure with no internal breakdown, so the payroll component is estimated at 65% of the envelope — 2,470.0 millió Ft — on the basis that a back-office service centre’s principal cost is the salaries of its administrative, IT, and finance staff; this estimate should be replaced with the centre’s audited payroll figure before implementation. Severance-with-overlap pays the payroll component for 24 months while staff move into the competitive business-process, accountancy, and IT sector, keeping both incomes during the overlap. The non-payroll component — an estimated 1,330.0 millió Ft of software licences, premises, and operating cost — ends in the first budget cycle. Year-1 and Year-2 net saving is the non-payroll envelope of 1,330.0 millió Ft (the payroll is still being paid as severance); from Year 3 the full 3,800.0 millió Ft is saved annually, as the state-owned companies procure these services on the market and the cost sits with them. The estimate is flagged for replacement with the audited payroll share.
• Affected groups: The staff of the centralised service centre — an administrative, IT, and finance workforce with directly transferable skills. The 24-month severance-with-overlap bridge gives continued salary with the right to take new employment during the overlap; for this skill profile, re-employment in the business-process, accountancy, and IT sector is the realistic household path. The state-owned companies in the portfolio procure back-office services from the market rather than receiving them as a centralised subsidy.

Fejezeti tartalék (Chapter reserve)

• Current allocation: 1,500.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This is the chapter’s contingency reserve — an unallocated sum held against in-year needs that cannot be foreseen at budget time. A modest reserve within a chapter of this size (1,500.0 millió Ft against a 1,712,429.0 millió Ft envelope, under 0.1%) is ordinary prudent budgeting, not a programme: it is not a transfer, not a grant pool, and not a function to be phased out. It is kept as a technical line. The reserve should, as the year proceeds, be allocated against genuine contingencies; an unallocated reserve that is routinely spent on discretionary additions at year-end would be a different and reviewable matter, but the line as a budgeted contingency is kept.
• Transition mechanism: None. The reserve is allocated against in-year contingencies as they arise.
• Affected groups: None.

Az ÉKM tulajdonosi joggyakorlásával kapcsolatos egyéb kiadások (Other expenditure related to the ÉKM’s exercise of ownership rights)

• Current allocation: 4,209.5 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Nominal Freeze
• Rationale: This line funds the “other expenditure” associated with the ministry’s exercise of ownership rights over the state-owned companies in its portfolio — the administrative cost of the state acting as shareholder. The state’s exercise of ownership rights over the companies it owns is a real activity that has a real cost; the question the frame puts is whether the underlying state ownership of transport companies should persist, and that question belongs to the chapters of the companies themselves, not to this administrative line. As a line in this chapter, the ownership-administration cost is a bounded administrative function, and the “other expenditure” framing with no breakdown makes itemisation costly relative to the sum. The line is held at its nominal level. The deeper point — that a state holding transport companies is a state exposed to the soft-budget-constraint pathology, where chronic loss-funding crowds out productive capital — is the subject of the network-operating lines below and of the companies’ own chapters; this line is the administrative residue of that ownership and is frozen.
• Transition mechanism: Hold at 4,209.5 millió Ft in nominal terms; real-terms erosion at ~2.5% inflation does the work. The underlying question of state ownership of the portfolio companies belongs to those companies’ chapters.
• Affected groups: None directly.

Nemzeti tervvagyonhoz kapcsolódó kiadások (Expenditure related to national planning assets)

• Current allocation: 42.5 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds the expenditure associated with the “national planning assets” — the administrative cost of managing a defined category of state-held planning-related assets. The line is very small (42.5 millió Ft) and records its own offsetting revenue of 200.0 millió Ft. The administrative management of a defined state asset register is a bounded, routine function, and the line imposes no material net call on the budget. It is kept as a technical line.
• Transition mechanism: None.
• Affected groups: None.

Gyorsforgalmi úthálózat rendelkezésre állási díj (Motorway network availability fee)

• Current allocation: 210,000.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Phase-Out (10 years)
• Rationale: This is one of the two largest lines in the chapter: 210,000.0 millió Ft paid as an availability fee for the motorway network. Since September 2022 the operation, maintenance, and development of roughly 1,237 km of the Hungarian motorway and express-road network has been carried out under a 35-year concession contract by a single concessionaire, MKIF Magyar Koncessziós Infrastruktúra Fejlesztő Zrt., to which the state pays a kilometre-based “rendelkezésre állási díj” (availability fee) for operating, maintaining, and developing the network.³ The classification has to separate two things the line fuses. The motorway network itself is durable, publicly-relevant infrastructure with a genuine network character — that is not at issue. What is at issue is the contractual form through which it is financed: a 35-year, single-concessionaire, availability-fee structure under which the state commits to a multi-decade stream of payments to one operator. An availability-fee concession is not the only way to keep a motorway network operated and maintained — the maintenance and operation of the ordinary public road network appears elsewhere in this same chapter as a directly budgeted line, not as a 35-year concession — and a structure that locks the state into a single counterparty for three and a half decades is the form most exposed to the calculation and public-choice problems the frame identifies: the fee is set by negotiation rather than by competitive price discovery on each maintenance cycle, the concessionaire’s profit is structurally protected by the contract rather than competed away, and the duration removes the function from periodic competitive re-tendering for a generation. The honest classification of the financing arrangement is Phase-Out: not the abrupt repudiation of the concession — the concessionaire is a contract counterparty with rights the rule of law protects, and the contract binds while it binds — but a 10-year transition in which the network’s operation and maintenance is brought back to a directly-budgeted, competitively-tendered model as the concession’s terms and break-points allow, with the availability-fee envelope falling toward the genuine, tendered cost of operating and maintaining the network. The 210,000.0 millió Ft is not the cost of the asphalt; it is the cost of the asphalt plus the contractual margin of a 35-year single-operator structure, and the reform recovers the margin.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 10 years, linear glide. The protected party is the concessionaire as a contract counterparty: the existing concession contract is honoured on its terms — abrupt repudiation is not the proposal — and the transition works through the contract’s renegotiation points and break clauses, bringing motorway operation and maintenance back to a directly-budgeted, competitively-tendered model over a decade. The glide reflects the contractual reality that the saving cannot be realised immediately: net saving rises from 21,000.0 millió Ft in Year 1 to the full 210,000.0 millió Ft in Year 10, as the availability fee converts to a tendered operating-and-maintenance cost. The “full saving” figure is the elimination of the availability-fee structure; the genuine tendered cost of operating and maintaining the network reappears as a directly-budgeted line, materially below the fee, and the net improvement is the recovered contractual margin.
• Affected groups: The concessionaire, MKIF Zrt., whose contractual rights under the existing concession are honoured through the transition rather than repudiated. Motorway users, who are unaffected in service terms — the network continues to be operated and maintained — and taxpayers, who over the decade fund the tendered cost of operation rather than the concession’s contractual margin.

M5, M6 autópálya rendelkezésre állási díjak (M5, M6 motorway availability fees)

• Current allocation: 180,000.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Phase-Out (8 years)
• Rationale: This line — 180,000.0 millió Ft — funds the availability fees on the M5 and M6 motorways, which are financed under separate, older public-private-partnership concession contracts predating the 2022 network concession. The M5 concession was concluded in 1994 and comprehensively modified in 2004; the M6 sections were contracted between 2004 and 2008 on terms of 22 to 30 years. The M6 Budapest-Dunaújváros section’s 22-year concession period, counted from the start of construction, reaches its end in October 2026.⁴ These contracts are the textbook case of the political-risk and calculation problems an availability-fee PPP concentrates. The fees are predominantly euro-denominated, with the Hungarian state bearing the exchange-rate risk — contrary to the international practice in which such risk is shared — and the Hungarian regulatory authority’s own analysis found that the disadvantageous financial models cost the state over 100 milliárd Ft more than planned in the 2008-2012 period alone, with the contracts deviating from international practice in ways systematically unfavourable to the state.⁴ The classification again separates the asset from the financing arrangement. The M5 and M6 are durable motorway infrastructure; the PPP concessions through which they were financed are a contractual form that loaded exchange-rate risk and a protected investor return onto the taxpayer. The honest classification of the financing arrangement is Phase-Out, and the horizon here is shorter than for the 2022 network concession because these contracts are already reaching their natural expiry across this period — the M6 section in October 2026, the M5 by 2031, the remaining M6 sections by the later 2030s. The phase-out is therefore largely the disciplined non-renewal of expiring contracts: as each concession reaches its term, the motorway it covers reverts to direct, competitively-tendered operation and maintenance rather than being rolled into a successor availability-fee concession. An 8-year horizon spans the cluster of expiry dates and treats the line as the run-off of a set of finite, expiring contracts.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 8 years, linear glide. The protected party is the existing PPP concessionaires, whose contracts are honoured to their contractual expiry rather than repudiated. The mechanism is the disciplined non-renewal of each concession as it reaches its term: the M6 Budapest-Dunaújváros section in 2026, the M5 in 2031, the remaining M6 sections through the later 2030s, with each reverting on expiry to directly-budgeted, competitively-tendered operation. Net saving rises from 22,500.0 millió Ft in Year 1 to the full 180,000.0 millió Ft in Year 8 as the concessions run off and the availability-fee structure is replaced by tendered operating-and-maintenance cost. As with the network concession, the “full saving” is the elimination of the availability-fee structure; the genuine operating cost of the M5 and M6 reappears as a tendered budgeted line below the fee.
• Affected groups: The M5 and M6 PPP concessionaires, whose contractual rights are honoured to expiry. Motorway users, unaffected in service terms. Taxpayers, who over the eight-year run-off cease funding the euro-denominated, risk-asymmetric concession fees and fund instead the tendered cost of operating the two motorways.

A vasúti pályahálózat működtetésének költségtérítése (Cost reimbursement for the operation of the rail infrastructure network)

• Current allocation: 210,000.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line — 210,000.0 millió Ft — reimburses the cost of operating and maintaining the rail infrastructure network: the track, signalling, and associated infrastructure operated by MÁV’s infrastructure-management company. The published business plan of the MÁV Pályaműködtetési Zrt. shows the 2025 cost-reimbursement framework divided into an operating-reimbursement component (around 148,000 millió Ft) and a renewal-reimbursement component (around 33,000 millió Ft), totalling approximately 180,800 millió Ft — materially below the 210,000 millió Ft 2026 budget line; the business plan does not separately itemise the 2026 operating and renewal components.⁵ The rail track is genuine network infrastructure — a single set of rails between two points, not replicable competitively — and keeping the track the public owns safe and serviceable is the rail counterpart of the road maintenance and renewal lines classified Keep above. The function is kept. The classification carries the qualification that runs through the whole soft-budget-constraint question in the Hungarian rail sector: a cost-reimbursement that reimburses whatever cost the infrastructure manager reports does not by itself impose the discipline of a price. Where the operator’s cost is reimbursed rather than tested against a competitively-established benchmark, the incentive to drive the cost down is weak, and chronic loss-funding can crowd out the productive capital the network actually needs. The recommendation is Keep on the function — the track must be operated and maintained — with the firm qualification that the reimbursement should be benchmarked against an independently established efficient cost of infrastructure operation, and that the renewal component should be competitively tendered, so that the line reimburses the efficient cost of running the network rather than whatever cost is reported.
• Transition mechanism: None on the function. Recommend that the cost-reimbursement be benchmarked against an independently established efficient operating cost rather than reimbursing reported cost, and that the renewal component be competitively tendered.
• Affected groups: None adversely. Rail users rely on an operated and maintained network; the benchmarking discipline affects the infrastructure manager’s cost control, not the service.

Vasúti személyszállítási közszolgáltatások költségtérítése (Cost reimbursement for rail passenger public service)

• Current allocation: 307,000.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Phase-Out (6 years)
• Rationale: This is the single largest line in the chapter: 307,000.0 millió Ft reimbursing the cost of rail passenger public service — the payment that covers the gap between what rail passengers pay in fares and what it costs to carry them. This is a different thing from the infrastructure-operation line above, and the distinction is the heart of the classification. Maintaining the track is keeping a network asset serviceable; reimbursing the passenger service is holding the fare below the cost of carriage and funding the difference from general taxation. The line is, in mechanism, a consumption subsidy: it lowers the price of one particular service — rail travel — for the people who use it, and funds the reduction from taxes paid by the whole population, including the majority who do not travel by rail or who travel on routes the subsidy does not reach. The within-class distributional pattern is worth naming. A general rail-fare subsidy of this size is not neutral across the income distribution: regular rail commuting into and between the larger towns is used more by employed, urban, and higher-income travellers than by the lowest-income households, many of whom are not commuting by rail at all; the funding, drawn from the general tax base, falls on every wage-earner including those in regions and occupations the rail network serves least. A worker in a small settlement with no usable rail service, paying SZJA and szociális hozzájárulási adó out of every month’s wage, is part-funding a fare reduction for a commuter whose journey the subsidy makes cheaper. The classification is Phase-Out rather than Keep because a permanent, universal, cost-reimbursement subsidy of rail fares is not a state function the frame keeps — but it is Phase-Out rather than Immediate Cut for two reasons. First, a large number of households have arranged their lives — where they live, where they work — around the current cost of rail commuting, and an abrupt removal of the subsidy would strand that reliance. Second, the social-policy concern that a fare rise would fall hardest on genuinely low-income rail users is real, and the honest answer is not a universal price cap but a targeted mechanism — concessionary fares for low-income, elderly, student, and disabled travellers — that protects the people the universal subsidy is loosely assumed to protect, at a fraction of the cost. The six-year phase-out moves rail fares toward cost-reflective levels in steps, with the targeted concessionary scheme standing up alongside, so that the protected travellers keep a reduced fare and the general subsidy to all rail users unwinds.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 6 years, linear glide. The protected party is the households that have arranged work and residence around current rail-commuting cost, and genuinely low-income rail users. Year 1 holds the line while a targeted concessionary-fare scheme — for low-income, elderly, student, and disabled travellers — is designed and stood up; Years 2-6 move the standard fare toward cost-reflective levels in steps, with the concessionary scheme protecting the targeted groups. Net saving rises from 51,166.7 millió Ft in Year 1 to the full 307,000.0 millió Ft in Year 6 — against which the cost of the targeted concessionary scheme, a fraction of the universal subsidy, is a partial offset that should be budgeted explicitly in the relevant social-policy chapter rather than hidden inside a universal fare reimbursement.
• Affected groups: Rail passengers, who over the six-year glide pay fares moving toward the cost of carriage — with low-income, elderly, student, and disabled travellers protected by the targeted concessionary scheme. Households that arranged residence and employment around subsidised commuting cost, given six years to adjust. The rail operator, whose revenue shifts from cost-reimbursement toward fare income.

Autóbusszal végzett személyszállítási közszolgáltatások költségtérítése (Cost reimbursement for bus passenger public service)

• Current allocation: 40,500.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Phase-Out (6 years)
• Rationale: This line reimburses the cost of bus passenger public service — the bus counterpart of the rail passenger cost-reimbursement, covering the gap between bus fares and the cost of carriage. It is classified Phase-Out on the same consumption-subsidy grounds as the rail passenger line above; the key distinction is that on many rural routes the scheduled bus is the sole public transport link, used by exactly the low-income, elderly, and non-car-owning residents the targeted concessionary scheme is meant to protect — which means the concessionary mechanism carries more of the load here than on the rail network, and the design of the targeted scheme should reflect that weight. The six-year glide and the targeted scheme run in parallel with the rail line above.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 6 years, linear glide, coordinated with the rail passenger line. Year 1 holds the line while the targeted concessionary-fare scheme is stood up; Years 2-6 move standard bus fares toward cost-reflective levels, with the concessionary scheme protecting low-income, elderly, student, and disabled travellers and carrying particular weight on sole-link rural routes. Net saving rises from 6,750.0 millió Ft in Year 1 to the full 40,500.0 millió Ft in Year 6, against which the targeted scheme’s cost is a partial, explicitly-budgeted offset.
• Affected groups: Bus passengers, paying fares moving toward the cost of carriage over six years, with targeted groups protected. Residents of settlements where the scheduled bus is the sole public transport link, for whom the concessionary scheme carries particular weight. The bus operators, whose revenue shifts toward fare income.

Autóbusszal végzett személyszállítási közszolgáltatások ellentételezése (Compensation for bus passenger public service)

• Current allocation: 277,000.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Phase-Out (6 years)
• Rationale: This line — 277,000.0 millió Ft, the third-largest in the chapter — is the bus passenger service “ellentételezés” (compensation), a separate and much larger payment than the bus “költségtérítés” (cost reimbursement) line above. The budget uses two different words for two payments to the same activity: a cost-reimbursement of 40,500.0 millió Ft and a compensation of 277,000.0 millió Ft. In the public-service-obligation framework, the “compensation” is the payment to the bus operator for running services on routes and at frequencies that the operator would not run on fare revenue alone — the loss-making rural and inter-settlement routes that a public-service-obligation mandate requires. This is the largest single subsidy in the bus network, and it is, in mechanism, a combination of two things: a genuine support for transport access in thin-demand areas, and the loss-funding of a state-owned bus operator whose cost base is not tested by competition. The classification is Phase-Out, and the reform is not the abandonment of rural transport access but the replacement of an untested, operator-level compensation with a tendered, route-level mechanism. Where a rural route genuinely needs to be supported, the support should be put out to competitive tender — the public-service obligation specified, and operators bidding for the lowest subsidy to run it — so that the compensation pays the competitively-established cost of providing the access rather than the reported loss of a single state operator. This is the standard public-service-obligation tendering model, and it separates the legitimate question (which thin-demand routes does the public want supported) from the soft-budget question (is the operator’s cost base efficient). The six-year horizon allows the route network to be specified, the public-service obligations defined, and the tendering rounds run, with current services continuing throughout.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 6 years, linear glide. The protected party is the residents of thin-demand areas who rely on the supported routes, and the orderly continuity of service during the transition. Year 1 holds the line while the supported route network is specified and the public-service obligations defined; Years 2-6 competitively tender the route-level public-service obligations in rounds, replacing operator-level loss-compensation with route-level tendered subsidy. The “full saving” of 277,000.0 millió Ft is the elimination of the untested operator-compensation envelope; the competitively-tendered cost of genuinely supporting thin-demand routes reappears as a smaller budgeted line, and the net improvement is the recovered soft-budget margin. Net saving — the recovered margin — rises from 46,166.7 millió Ft in Year 1 to the full envelope in Year 6, with the tendered route-support cost rebudgeted explicitly.
• Affected groups: Residents of thin-demand rural and inter-settlement areas who rely on supported bus routes — protected by the continuation of service through the transition and by the route-level tendered support that follows. The state-owned bus operator, whose loss-compensation is replaced by competitively-won route contracts and which must compete on cost. Taxpayers, who fund the tendered cost of route support rather than an operator’s reported loss.

Elővárosi közösségi közlekedés költségtérítése (Cost reimbursement for suburban community transport)

• Current allocation: 19,000.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Phase-Out (6 years)
• Rationale: This line reimburses the cost of suburban community transport — the commuter services linking the suburban belts to the larger towns. The mechanism is the same fare-below-cost consumption subsidy as the rail and bus passenger lines, and the classification is the same Phase-Out for the same reasons: a permanent universal subsidy of suburban commuter fares is not a state function the frame keeps, household reliance on current commuting cost is real, and the honest path is a phased move toward cost-reflective fares with a targeted concessionary scheme. Suburban commuter travel skews, if anything, more toward employed and higher-income travellers than the network as a whole, which sharpens the within-class point: the general subsidy lowers the commuting cost of suburban earners and is funded from a tax base that includes the lower-income households least likely to be making that commute. The six-year glide runs in parallel with the rail and bus passenger lines and uses the same targeted concessionary scheme.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 6 years, linear glide, coordinated with the rail and bus passenger lines. Year 1 holds the line while the targeted concessionary scheme is stood up; Years 2-6 move suburban commuter fares toward cost-reflective levels. Net saving rises from 3,166.7 millió Ft in Year 1 to the full 19,000.0 millió Ft in Year 6, against which the targeted scheme’s cost is a partial offset.
• Affected groups: Suburban commuters, paying fares moving toward the cost of carriage over six years, with low-income, elderly, student, and disabled travellers protected by the targeted scheme. Households that arranged residence around subsidised commuting cost.

Közlekedési közszolgáltatások energiaköltségének támogatása (Support for the energy cost of transport public services)

• Current allocation: 34,000.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Phase-Out (3 years)
• Rationale: This line — 34,000.0 millió Ft — funds the energy cost of transport public services: the traction electricity, diesel, and fuel cost of running the rail and bus networks. The line is, in substance, a component of the operating cost of the passenger services already funded by the cost-reimbursement and compensation lines above — energy is one of the inputs into running a train or a bus, alongside crew, rolling stock, and maintenance. Carving the energy cost out as a separate support line is an artefact of how the budget responded to the 2022-2023 energy price shock: when fuel and electricity prices spiked, a separate energy-support line absorbed the increase rather than letting it flow through the operators’ cost base. The honest classification is that the energy cost of a transport service is part of that service’s cost and belongs inside the service’s own funding line, not as a free-standing support. A separate, open-ended energy-cost-support line also blunts every incentive the operators have to manage energy efficiently — if the energy bill is reimbursed in full on a dedicated line, there is no pressure to economise on it. The line is phased out over three years by folding the energy cost back into the operators’ cost base, where it sits as one input among others and is subject to the same benchmarking and tendering discipline recommended for the cost-reimbursement lines. This is a reclassification, not a service cut: the trains and buses continue to run, and their energy is paid for as part of their cost rather than on a separate line.
• Transition mechanism: Phase-Out over 3 years, linear glide. The energy cost is folded back into the rail and bus operators’ cost base over three years, where it is reimbursed as part of the (benchmarked, tendered) operating cost rather than on a dedicated support line. Year 1 folds one-third, Year 2 two-thirds, Year 3 the full amount. Net saving as a free-standing line rises from 11,333.3 millió Ft in Year 1 to 34,000.0 millió Ft in Year 3 — with the genuine energy cost reappearing inside the operators’ cost base, where the benchmarking discipline applies to it.
• Affected groups: None adversely. The rail and bus services continue; their energy cost is funded as part of their operating cost rather than on a separate line, and the operators face an incentive to manage energy use that a full-reimbursement line removed.

A Nemzeti Útdíjfizetési Szolgáltató Zrt. tulajdonosi joggyakorlásával kapcsolatos kiadások (Expenditure related to the exercise of ownership rights over the National Toll Payment Services company)

• Current allocation: 2,000.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds the cost associated with the state’s exercise of ownership rights over the Nemzeti Útdíjfizetési Szolgáltató Zrt. (National Toll Payment Services company), the operator of the electronic toll system. The line is small and technical — the administrative cost of the state acting as shareholder of the toll company — and it sits within the toll-system cluster whose net position is examined below. It is kept as a technical ownership-administration line; the substantive question of the toll system is the net-cost question taken up in the Key Observations.
• Transition mechanism: None.
• Affected groups: None.

Útdíj rendszerek működtetésével összefüggő átfolyó költségek és adók (Pass-through costs and taxes associated with toll-system operation)

• Current allocation: 24,000.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds the “pass-through costs and taxes” associated with operating the toll systems — by its own description a technical pass-through line, money that flows through the toll-system accounts as taxes and transferable costs rather than a programme or a discretionary allocation. A pass-through line is not a candidate for the transition taxonomy in the ordinary sense: it is an accounting conduit, and it is kept as such. The substantive question — whether the toll system as a whole is run efficiently — is the net-position question in the Key Observations, not a classification of this technical line.
• Transition mechanism: None. The line is a technical pass-through.
• Affected groups: None.

Útdíj rendszerek működtetésével összefüggő működési költségek (Operating costs associated with toll-system operation)

• Current allocation: 34,600.0 millió Ft (operating)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This line funds the operating cost of the toll systems — the running cost of collecting the electronic motorway toll and the heavy-goods-vehicle distance toll. Road tolling is, in the frame, one of the better-aligned things in the chapter: a toll is a price, paid by the user of the road, that brings the cost of using the infrastructure home to the person who uses it rather than spreading it across all taxpayers — it is the closest the road network comes to a market price signal. The cost of operating the system that collects that price is a legitimate cost of running a user-pays mechanism, and the line is kept. The classification carries one observation that belongs with it: the toll system as a whole — this operating line plus the company-ownership and pass-through lines — should be assessed as a net position against the 58,600.0 millió Ft of toll revenue the system generates, and the operating cost should be tested for efficiency against that revenue. A toll system whose collection cost consumes an excessive share of the toll revenue is a user-pays mechanism run inefficiently; the recommendation is Keep on the function, with an operating-efficiency review of the collection cost against the revenue.
• Transition mechanism: None on the function. Operating-efficiency review of the collection cost, assessed as a net position against toll revenue.
• Affected groups: None adversely. Road users pay the toll; the system that collects it is kept.

Revenue Items

The chapter records 118,074.0 millió Ft of own revenue against 1,712,429.0 millió Ft of expenditure — own revenue covers about 6.9% of the chapter’s spending, and the chapter is financed overwhelmingly from general taxation and from the network-operating call on the central budget.

• Name: ÉKM igazgatás működési bevétele (Ministry administration operating revenue)

• Current yield: 38,891.0 millió Ft

• Type: Fee / Charge

• Notes: Recorded against the ministry administration title. For a ministry administering construction and transport regulation this is most plausibly the fees and charges levied for regulatory and licensing acts — building-authority procedures, permits, and similar administrative charges. It is not a tax. The revenue attaches to the ministry’s ongoing regulatory function, which is kept; the reclassifications proposed above do not turn on it.

• Name: Múzeum működési bevétele (Museum operating revenue)

• Current yield: 45.0 millió Ft

• Type: Fee / Charge

• Notes: Admission and related income of the Magyar Műszaki és Közlekedési Múzeum — about 1.7% of the museum’s 2,709.5 millió Ft cost. The nominal-freeze classification of the museum carries an explicit expectation that this user-financed share rises over time.

• Name: Közúthálózat fenntartás működési bevétele (Road network maintenance operating revenue)

• Current yield: 2,000.0 millió Ft

• Type: Fee / Charge

• Notes: Own revenue attaching to the road-maintenance line; minor relative to that line’s 107,500.0 millió Ft cost. Unaffected by the reclassifications.

• Name: Közúti közlekedésbiztonsági feladatok bevétele (Road safety tasks revenue)

• Current yield: 3,338.0 millió Ft

• Type: Fee / Charge

• Notes: This revenue exactly matches the 3,338.0 millió Ft expenditure on the road-safety-and-environmental line — the activity is fully self-financing and imposes no net call on the budget.

• Name: Koncessziós díjak (Concession fees)

• Current yield: 15,000.0 millió Ft

• Type: Fee / Charge

• Notes: Fees received by the state in connection with its exercise of ownership rights — concession-related receipts. Recorded in the capital (felhalmozási) revenue column under the centrally-managed block. If the availability-fee concession arrangements are unwound as the phase-out of the motorway lines proposes, the structure of concession-related receipts would change in parallel; the figure is modest relative to the 390,000.0 millió Ft of availability fees paid out.

• Name: Nemzeti tervvagyonhoz kapcsolódó bevételek (Revenue related to national planning assets)

• Current yield: 200.0 millió Ft

• Type: Other

• Notes: Minor receipts associated with the national planning assets; offsets the small 42.5 millió Ft expenditure line of the same name.

• Name: Útdíj rendszerek működési bevételei (Toll-system operating revenue)

• Current yield: 58,600.0 millió Ft

• Type: Fee / Charge

• Notes: The toll revenue collected by the electronic motorway toll and the heavy-goods-vehicle distance toll. This is the chapter’s largest revenue line and it is a genuine user charge — the price paid by the user of the road. It should be read against the toll-system cost lines (the 2,000.0, 24,000.0, and 34,600.0 millió Ft centrally-managed lines): the net position of the toll system as a whole, not the gross cost lines in isolation, is the analytically relevant figure.

This chapter contains no major tax revenue items. The central government’s tax revenue structure (SZJA, ÁFA, corporate tax, excise) sits in Chapter XLII, not here.

Chapter Summary

Classification	Count	Total (millió Ft)
Immediate Cut	2	7,829.3
Phase-Out	11	1,122,482.3
Nominal Freeze	6	16,457.9
Keep	17	565,659.5
Total	36	1,712,429.0

Revenue	Total (millió Ft)
Total chapter revenue	118,074.0

Year-1 net saving across all reclassified lines: 7,829.3 (Immediate Cut: Mohács 500 and Visegrád 700) + 10,056.7 (industrial-park infrastructure) + 1,674.1 (Budavári ingatlanok) + 861.6 (cultural value-preservation tasks) + 1,330.0 (centralised corporate services, non-payroll) + 21,000.0 (motorway availability fee) + 22,500.0 (M5/M6 availability fees) + 51,166.7 (rail passenger service) + 6,750.0 (bus passenger cost-reimbursement) + 46,166.7 (bus passenger compensation) + 3,166.7 (suburban transport) + 11,333.3 (transport energy support) = approximately 183,835.1 millió Ft. Steady-state saving from the completion of the longest phase-out (the motorway availability fee, Year 10): the full 7,829.3 + 1,122,482.3 = 1,130,311.6 millió Ft, against a chapter envelope of 1,712,429.0 millió Ft. The “full saving” figures on the motorway and the public-service-obligation compensation lines are the elimination of the contractual or soft-budget margin; the genuine tendered cost of operating the motorways and supporting thin-demand routes reappears as smaller, competitively-established budgeted lines, so the steady-state net improvement to the public finances is the recovered margin rather than the gross envelope. The nominal-freeze lines erode by roughly 20-25% in real terms over a decade.

Key Observations

• The chapter is 78% network-operating payments, and the analysis turns on separating the asset from the financing arrangement. The központi kezelésű block — 1,342,351.5 millió Ft — is where the chapter’s weight sits, and almost none of it is the ministry. A road and a railway track are durable network infrastructure the frame keeps; a 35-year single-concessionaire availability fee, a euro-denominated PPP that loaded exchange-rate risk onto the taxpayer, and an operator-level loss-compensation untested by competition are financing arrangements, and the financing arrangement is contestable even where the infrastructure is not. Every large Phase-Out in this chapter phases out a contractual or subsidy form, not a road or a railway.

• Operating the network and subsidising the fare are different questions, and the budget’s neutral word “költségtérítés” hides the difference. The 210,000.0 millió Ft rail-infrastructure line keeps the track serviceable — a network-asset function, classified Keep. The 307,000.0 millió Ft rail-passenger line holds the fare below the cost of carriage — a consumption subsidy, classified Phase-Out. The same word covers both. The honest reform funds the track and moves the fare toward cost, with a targeted concessionary scheme — for low-income, elderly, student, and disabled travellers — protecting the people a universal subsidy is loosely assumed to protect, at a fraction of the cost.

• The passenger subsidies have a regressive within-class pattern that the universal framing hides. Regular rail and suburban commuting skews toward employed, urban, higher-income travellers; the funding, drawn from the general tax base, falls on every wage-earner including those in regions and occupations the rail network serves least. A worker in a settlement with no usable rail link part-funds, through SZJA and szociális hozzájárulási adó, the fare reduction of a higher-earning commuter. The diagnostic is the standard one — a benefit whose use scales with urban, employed status, funded from general tax, branded as universal public service — and the targeted concessionary scheme is what replaces the regressive universal subsidy with support that reaches the intended group. The bus network is the partial exception: in sole-link rural settlements the scheduled bus carries exactly the low-income and non-car-owning residents the targeted scheme protects, which is why the bus phase-outs lean on a route-level public-service-obligation tender rather than a simple fare rise.

• The availability-fee concessions are the textbook soft-budget and political-risk case. The 35-year motorway concession sets the fee by negotiation rather than competitive price discovery on each maintenance cycle and removes the function from re-tendering for a generation; the M5/M6 PPPs were found by Hungary’s own regulatory authority to have cost the state over 100 milliárd Ft more than planned in 2008-2012 alone, on euro-denominated terms that loaded exchange-rate risk onto the taxpayer. The reform is not repudiation — the concessionaires are contract counterparties whose rights the rule of law protects — but the disciplined non-renewal of these contracts as they reach their break-points and expiry, returning motorway operation to a directly-budgeted, competitively-tendered model. The M6 Budapest-Dunaújváros concession’s expiry in October 2026 is the first such point.

• The bus passenger “ellentételezés” is the largest soft-budget line in the chapter and the public-service-obligation tender is the alternative. The 277,000.0 millió Ft compensation pays a state-owned operator for running loss-making routes, with the operator’s cost base untested by competition. Supporting transport access in thin-demand areas is a legitimate question; loss-funding an operator is not the way to answer it. The route-level public-service-obligation tender — the public specifies the routes and frequencies it wants supported, operators bid for the lowest subsidy to run them — separates the legitimate access question from the soft-budget question and pays the competitively-established cost of the access rather than the reported loss.

• The commemorative-year lines are pure discretionary allocation and the smallest honest part of the chapter to cut. Mohács 500 (7,229.3 millió Ft) and Visegrád 700 (600.0 millió Ft) are sums decided by political officeholders to mark anniversaries, with “related development” recipients chosen at discretion. There is no rights-protection function, no constitutional precondition, and no dependency chain; the marking of an anniversary that a society genuinely wants is exactly what historical associations, municipalities, churches, and sponsors fund voluntarily. Both are Immediate Cuts; any “related development” that is a genuine independent infrastructure project is reclassified into the relevant chapter and justified on its own merits.

• The toll system is the best-aligned thing in the chapter and should be read as a net position. A road toll is a price paid by the user of the infrastructure — the closest the road network comes to a market signal — and the 58,600.0 millió Ft of toll revenue should be set against the toll-system cost lines (2,000.0 + 24,000.0 + 34,600.0 millió Ft) rather than the cost lines being read in isolation. The recommendation on tolling is not phase-out but an operating-efficiency review of the collection cost against the revenue: a user-pays mechanism is the right structure; the question is whether it is run efficiently.

Sources

Footnotes

1. “Bemutatkozás.” Várkapitányság Integrált Területfejlesztési Központ Nonprofit Zrt. https://varkapitanysag.hu/bemutatkozas. The Várkapitányság is a state-owned public-benefit nonprofit company under the ownership of the Ministry of Construction and Transport, tasked with the property management, value preservation, and daily operation of the state-owned historic buildings and public spaces of the Budavári Palotanegyed; the reconstructed József Archduke Palace is to house the Constitutional Court, with key reconstruction milestones scheduled through 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. KSH, “Keresetek” (Earnings). Központi Statisztikai Hivatal. https://www.ksh.hu/keresetek. The 540,000 Ft figure approximates the median bruttó (gross) monthly earnings of full-time employees reported for the 2024 reference period (KSH keresetek gyorstajekoztato, December 2024: median gross earnings 560,900 Ft; the rounded 540,000 Ft figure used in this analysis corresponds to a slightly earlier reference period within the same year). ↩

3. “1237 kilométernyi gyorsforgalmi út üzemeltetését vette át az MKIF Zrt.” Origo. 2022. https://www.origo.hu/gazdasag/2022/09/gyorsforgalmi-ut-koncesszio. “Az MKIF Magyar Koncessziós Infrastruktúra Fejlesztő Zrt., 2022. szeptember elsején, 1237 km hazai gyorsforgalmi út üzemeltetését, fenntartását, fejlesztését vette át a Magyar Államtól 35 évre.” The state pays the concessionaire a kilometre-based availability fee (“rendelkezésre állási díj”) for operating, maintaining, and developing the network. ↩

4. “A Magyar Állam szempontjából rendkívül kedvezőtlen szerződéseket kötöttek a 2010 előtti kormányok az M5 és az M6 jelzésű autópályák koncessziós hasznosítása érdekében.” Szabályozott Tevékenységek Felügyeleti Hatósága (SZTFH). 2022. https://sztfh.hu/a-magyar-allam-szempontjabol-rendkivul-kedvezotlen-szerzodeseket-kotottek-a-2010-elotti-kormanyok-az-m5-es-az-m6-jelzesu-autopalyak-koncesszios-hasznositasa-erdekeben/. The M5 concession was concluded in 1994 and comprehensively modified in 2004; the M6 section contracts were signed between 2004 and 2008 with terms of 22 to 30 years. “A szerződések hátrányos pénzügyi modelljei miatt a 2008-2012 közötti éveket nézve az Államnak több mint 100 milliárd forinttal többe került.” The availability fees are predominantly euro-denominated with the Hungarian state bearing the exchange-rate risk. The M6 Budapest-Dunaújváros section’s 22-year concession period from the start of construction reaches its end in October 2026 (Telex, “M6 autópálya PPP koncesszió,” January 2026, https://telex.hu/g7/vallalat/2026/01/08/m6-autopalya-ppp-koncesszio-mkif-meszaros-lorinc-szijj-laszlo-ekm). ↩ ↩²

5. “A MÁV Pályaműködtetési Zrt. 2026-2028. évi üzleti tervének kivonata.” MÁV-csoport. 2025. https://www.mavcsoport.hu/sites/default/files/upload/page/uzleti_terv_2026-2028.pdf. The 2025 cost-reimbursement framework for rail infrastructure operation comprised an operating-reimbursement component of approximately 148,025 millió Ft and a renewal-reimbursement component of approximately 32,775 millió Ft (together approximately 180,800 millió Ft). The 2026 budget line of 210,000 millió Ft is materially above this 2025 framework; the business plan does not separately itemise the 2026 operating and renewal components at this writing. ↩