Revenues and Expenditures Related to the National Land Fund

Life annuity payments to approximately 12,000 elderly landowners who transferred agricultural land to the state in exchange for a guaranteed lifetime income — contractual obligations entered under the 2010 National Land Fund Act. No new enrolments have occurred since approximately 2011; the cohort is in natural wind-down. The FSI keeps all existing annuity payments in full. The phase-out classification reflects the natural attrition of the cohort over a 10-year horizon, not any reduction for current recipients. Year-1 saving is zero: every existing contract is honoured unconditionally.

A broad catch-all for general asset-management operating costs with no sub-itemisation in the budget tables. At 2,159 mFt this is material enough to require transparency. A nominal freeze is appropriate pending a mandatory itemised audit. The FSI requires that any individual programme above 200 mFt within this envelope be separately identified in the supplementary budget tables within the 2027 budget cycle.

The state purchasing agricultural land in a functioning market — acting as a buyer in competition with private farmers and investment funds. CAP direct payments flow to land operators regardless of ownership, so state ownership confers no agricultural-policy benefit over private ownership. There is no public-good argument for the state as an active land acquirer: title, property rights, and contract enforcement work equally well under private ownership. Eliminate immediately. This allocation costs each SZJA payer roughly 444 Ft per year — small, but the principle is categorical.

Maintenance costs for state-managed agricultural parcels awaiting disposal — necessary to preserve land value ahead of sale. A nominal freeze is appropriate: the portfolio should shrink as the FSI-preferred divestiture programme accelerates. As parcels are sold, the maintenance obligation contracts proportionately. The reform lever is the pace of disposal (XLIV-R1), not the per-hectare maintenance cost, which is determined by agronomic necessity.

A discretionary contingency reserve for a chapter of this operational predictability and modest scale. Agricultural land management generates highly predictable expenditures — annuity payments are actuarially determined, maintenance costs are agronomically bounded, and court settlements are drawn from a finite litigation portfolio. A chapter reserve is not operationally necessary; genuine unforeseen costs are covered by the national treasury reserve in Chapter XLII. Eliminate immediately. At 250 mFt the saving is small; the principle of eliminating purposeless discretionary reserves matters for budget discipline.

Contractual reimbursements to former owners or lessees for value-enhancing improvements made to returned agricultural parcels — binding legal obligations arising from the return of parcels following ownership disputes or programme exits. The FSI keeps this line. These are contractual claims against the state arising from specific agreements; reducing the budget allocation would simply defer rather than eliminate the liability. The amount is small; administrative cost of any reform exceeds the saving.

Cadastral survey and legal regularisation of state-owned parcels — administrative work linked to the EU MePAR land-parcel identification system required for CAP compliance. This is a legitimate administrative function: accurate land records are a property-rights institution that benefits the entire agricultural sector, not merely the state as landowner. A nominal freeze is appropriate; the per-hectare cost of cadastral administration is low and determined by surveying rates, not by policy discretion.

Court-ordered payments arising from judicial decisions in land disputes — unavoidable legal obligations with no discretionary element. The FSI keeps this line. Honouring court judgments is a foundational rule-of-law requirement; reducing this budget line would require the state to default on judicial decisions, which breaches both constitutional and EU law principles. The relevant reform is preventing the accumulation of new litigation through clearer property rights and faster cadastral regularisation.