Chapter XIII: Honvédelmi Minisztérium (Ministry of Defence)

Overview

Chapter XIII funds the Hungarian Ministry of Defence and, attached to the same chapter, the central government’s entire competitive- and elite-sport apparatus. The total expenditure allocation for 2026 is 2,156,280.7 millió Ft — roughly 2,156 milliárd Ft — against chapter revenue of 44,934.7 millió Ft, leaving a net call on general taxation of 2,111,346.0 millió Ft.

The chapter splits cleanly into two domains with almost nothing in common analytically:

1. Defence (titles 1-8): 1,919,562.0 millió Ft. The Honvédelmi Minisztérium (Ministry of Defence) and its directorate, the Magyar Honvédség (Hungarian Defence Forces), the Katonai Nemzetbiztonsági Szolgálat (Military National Security Service), a military secondary school, the named defence-capability development programmes (air, land, other, sustainment, infrastructure), NATO and EU contributions, and a set of chapter-managed grants.

2. Sport (titles 20-22): 236,718.7 millió Ft. The Nemzeti Sportfejlesztési és Módszertani Intézet (National Sports Development and Methodology Institute), the Országos Sportegészségügyi Intézet (National Sports Health Institute), competitive- and youth-sport subsidies, federation transfers including 16,231.0 millió Ft to the Magyar Labdarúgó Szövetség (Hungarian Football Federation), athlete annuities, and the Nemzeti Sportinfrastruktúra Ügynökség (National Sports Infrastructure Agency) that owns and operates the state stadium stock.

These are placed in one budget chapter because the sport portfolio is administratively assigned to the defence minister. They are not placed there by any shared function. The analysis treats them separately, because the classical-liberal answer differs sharply between them: defence against external aggression is one of the narrow set of functions the framework recognises as a rights- protection precondition; the routing of general tax revenue into elite-sport federations, stadium operation, and athlete annuities is a discretionary allocation by political officeholders that the framework does not.

Expenditure Analysis

Magyar Honvédség (Hungarian Defence Forces) — operating budget

• Current allocation: 443,741.1 millió Ft (személyi juttatások 353,923.2; munkaadói járulékok 44,708.7; dologi kiadások 42,233.3; egyéb működési 75.1; beruházások 2,450.8; egyéb felhalmozási 350.0)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: The operating budget of the standing armed forces is a defence-against-external-aggression line. In the classical- liberal frame, protection against involuntary harm inflicted by a foreign power is not a service that resolves to a market price; it is a precondition for the existence of the market itself, and for the rule of law within which voluntary exchange takes place. A citizen cannot opt out of the territorial defence of the country they live in the way they can decline a subscription. The Magyar Honvédség had a fillable establishment of roughly 34,200 posts at end-2024 against a parliamentary-authorised ceiling near 37,650.¹ This is a personnel-heavy line — 89.7% of the operating envelope is pay and the associated employer contributions — and that is expected for a standing force. Keep does not mean immunity from operating-efficiency review. A force whose pay bill is eight times its materiel and procurement spend on this title invites the question whether the establishment is sized to a defined defence task or to a recruitment target; that is a question for a defence- capability audit, not for the transition taxonomy.
• Transition mechanism: None. Subject the line to a standing capability-and-readiness review measuring output (units at declared readiness, equipment availability) rather than headcount.
• Affected groups: Serving personnel; the general population as the protected party.

Védelmi képességek fejlesztése és fenntartása (Defence capability development and sustainment)

• Current allocation: 1,164,854.5 millió Ft across six programmes — Légierő és légvédelmi képességek fejlesztése (air and air-defence capability development) 255,709.4; Szárazföldi képességek fejlesztése (land capability development) 424,564.7; Egyéb katonai képességek fejlesztése (other military capability development) 71,015.4; Katonai képességek fenntartása és működtetése (capability sustainment and operation) 192,465.7; Katonai infrastruktúra fejlesztése (military infrastructure development) 62,050.7; Katonai infrastruktúra fenntartása és működtetése (infrastructure sustainment and operation) 159,048.6
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: This is the procurement and sustainment core of the defence function — the largest single block in the chapter at roughly 54% of the defence envelope, weighted heavily toward capital acquisition (the felhalmozási, capital, component is 463,304.3 millió Ft of the 1,164,854.5 millió Ft block). Equipment acquisition for territorial defence falls within the rights- protection function for the same reason the operating budget does. The classical-liberal qualification is on procurement method, not on whether the state buys: a defence ministry purchasing major platforms is a monopsony buyer with no market price signal telling it whether it has bought the right mix at the right price. That is a genuine calculation difficulty, and it is the reason competitive multi-bidder tendering, published unit costs, and independent cost audit matter more here than almost anywhere else in the budget — not because the function is illegitimate, but because the absence of a price signal makes the function uniquely exposed to overpayment and capability mismatch. The classification is Keep; the recommendation attached to it is a procurement-transparency discipline, not a cut.
• Transition mechanism: None to the line. Attach a standing requirement that major-platform acquisitions publish competitive- tender records and per-unit cost, and that a capability audit external to the ministry reconciles spend against declared defence tasks.
• Affected groups: Defence contractors; serving personnel; the general population as the protected party.

Honvédelmi Minisztérium igazgatása and Egyéb HM szervezetek (Ministry directorate and other MoD organisations)

• Current allocation: 50,502.9 millió Ft (directorate 15,060.0; other MoD organisations 35,442.9)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: The ministry directorate is the civilian command and administrative apparatus of the defence function. A state that finances a standing army finances the body that directs it. The line is a Keep on the same rights-protection reasoning as the force itself, with the same operating-efficiency caveat.
• Transition mechanism: None. Periodic administrative-overhead review.
• Affected groups: Ministry staff.

Katonai Nemzetbiztonsági Szolgálat (Military National Security Service)

• Current allocation: 50,678.0 millió Ft
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: Military counter-intelligence and the protection of the armed forces against hostile foreign intelligence activity is an integral part of the defence function. Keep, with the standard qualification that intelligence bodies, because their output is by nature unobservable to the public that funds them, require proportionately stronger parliamentary oversight than ordinary administrative lines — oversight being the substitute for the market and electoral feedback that does not reach a classified activity.
• Transition mechanism: None. Parliamentary defence-and-security committee oversight.
• Affected groups: Service personnel.

NATO and EU contributions (Hozzájárulás a NATO-hoz és EU-hoz)

• Current allocation: 38,394.9 millió Ft, comprising: Hozzájárulás a NATO Biztonsági Beruházási Programjához (contribution to the NATO Security Investment Programme) 23,998.8; Hozzájárulás a NATO katonai működési költségvetéséhez (NATO military budget) 9,384.2; Hozzájárulás a NATO Innovációs Alapjához (NATO Innovation Fund) 1,220.3; Hozzájárulás egyéb NATO védelmi együttműködésekhez és béketámogató műveletekhez (other NATO defence cooperation and peace-support operations) 2,337.7; Hozzájárulás az EU katonai műveleteinek finanszírozását biztosító programokhoz (EU military operations financing) 1,453.9; NATO és EU felajánlás alapján kialakításra kerülő készenléti alegységek (NATO/EU readiness units) 100.0
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: NATO membership contributions sit in case 3 of the first-principles-versus-current-law analysis: a treaty commitment that the framework’s own rule-of-law principle protects while it binds. Alliance burden-sharing is not a discretionary grant; it is the price of a collective-defence treaty whose deterrent value is itself a defence-against-external-aggression good. A unilateral Hungarian decision to stop paying assessed NATO contributions would not be a budget economy — it would be a treaty breach with consequences for the deterrent the chapter exists to fund. Keep.
• Transition mechanism: None.
• Affected groups: Alliance partners; the general population as the protected party of the collective-defence guarantee.

Honvédelmi szolgálati juttatások kiadásai (Defence service benefit expenditures)

• Current allocation: 118,157.8 millió Ft
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: Service benefits — the pay supplements, allowances, and conditions attaching to military service — are part of the total compensation of the standing force. They are not separable from the personnel cost of the defence function and classify with it. Keep, with the operating-efficiency caveat that the structure of military compensation is a legitimate subject of review.
• Transition mechanism: None.
• Affected groups: Serving personnel.

Hozzájárulás a hadigondozásról szóló törvény végrehajtásához (Contribution to the execution of the war-care law)

• Current allocation: 21,670.0 millió Ft
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: War-care provision (hadigondozás) is statutory support for war veterans, war widows and orphans, and those disabled in military service. This is a closed-class entitlement for individuals whose claim arises from involuntary harm suffered in the defence function the state directed them into. The reliance is of the strongest kind the framework recognises — a property- right-grade individual entitlement of identifiable persons, in case 3 of the first-principles-versus-current-law analysis. The cohort is finite and ageing, with no new wartime entrants, so the line falls naturally over time on cohort mortality without any policy action. There is no case for disturbing it: Keep.
• Transition mechanism: None. The line declines on its own actuarial schedule.
• Affected groups: War veterans and their dependants — a finite, ageing cohort.

Kratochvil Károly Honvéd Középiskola és Kollégium (Kratochvil Károly Defence Secondary School and Boarding Facility)

• Current allocation: 2,107.5 millió Ft (személyi 1,852.3; járulékok 243.3; dologi 11.9)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: A defence secondary school is the recruitment and early-formation pipeline of the officer and NCO corps. Where the state operates a standing force, training its future personnel is part of the same function. The line is small, bounded, and internal to the defence pipeline; classifying it anywhere other than Keep would be inconsistent with classifying the force itself a Keep.
• Transition mechanism: None.
• Affected groups: Pupils; defence-pipeline recruitment.

Védelmi Beszerzési Ügynökség Zrt. and Védelmi Innovációs Kutatóintézet Nonprofit Zrt.

• Current allocation: 12,025.1 millió Ft (Védelmi Beszerzési Ügynökség Zrt. — Defence Procurement Agency 3,652.4; Védelmi Innovációs Kutatóintézet Nonprofit Zrt. — Defence Innovation Research Institute 8,372.7)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: A central defence procurement agency is the organisational form through which the monopsony-buyer problem described under the capability-development block is managed. Consolidated, professionalised procurement is, if anything, the classical-liberal preference over fragmented ad-hoc purchasing, precisely because it concentrates the competitive-tendering discipline in one accountable place. The defence research institute is a defence-function research body. Both classify with the defence function as Keep — but both are exactly the lines where the procurement-transparency discipline recommended above must bite, because an agency that buys major platforms with no price signal is the point of maximum overpayment exposure in the whole chapter.
• Transition mechanism: None. Subject to the procurement- transparency discipline (published tenders, per-unit cost, external cost audit).
• Affected groups: Defence contractors; the procurement function.

HM Zrínyi Nkft. és Védelmi felkészítés központi feltételei (HM Zrínyi geoinformation/recruitment-support company and central defence-preparedness conditions)

• Current allocation: 10,776.9 millió Ft (HM Zrínyi Geoinformációs és Toborzástámogató Közhasznú Nonprofit Kft. feladatainak támogatása — HM Zrínyi Geoinformation and Recruitment-Support Nonprofit company 7,587.0; Védelmi felkészítés központi működési feltételeinek biztosítása — central operating conditions of defence preparedness 3,189.9)
• Classification: Keep
• Rationale: The HM Zrínyi company provides geoinformation and recruitment-support services to the defence function — military mapping and the recruitment apparatus of a force the analysis classifies a Keep. Central defence-preparedness conditions are the cross-cutting readiness infrastructure of the same function. Both are internal to defence and classify with it as Keep, with the standard operating-efficiency caveat. Where a nonprofit company delivers a defence-internal service it should be costed and audited as part of the force rather than treated as an arm’s-length grant recipient.
• Transition mechanism: None. Periodic cost-and-output review as part of the defence-capability audit.
• Affected groups: Company staff; the defence recruitment and geoinformation function.

Honvédelmi Sportszövetség támogatása (Defence Sport Federation subsidy)

• Current allocation: 4,083.9 millió Ft
• Classification: Phase-Out (3 years)
• Rationale: The Honvédelmi Sportszövetség (Defence Sport Federation, “MH Honvéd Sportegyesület” / honvédelmi sport network) funds shooting, military-style sport, and defence-themed youth activity through an association structure. The defence-preparedness framing does real rhetorical work here, but the line does not buy a defence capability — it subsidises the operating costs of a sport association. Where a function is genuinely a recruitment or reservist-readiness activity, it belongs inside the Magyar Honvédség establishment and its training budget, costed and audited as part of the force. Where it is a subsidy to an association that organises sport, it is a transfer to a private membership body whose members could fund their own activity through subscriptions and fees, and the defence label does not convert it into a rights-protection function. The honest classification is a phased exit: the association continues, on membership funding and on whatever genuine readiness contracting the Honvédség chooses to buy from it at an audited price.
• Transition mechanism: Three-year linear phase-out. Year 1 the Honvédség identifies any genuine reservist-readiness component and contracts for it directly at audited cost inside its own training budget; the residual association activity transitions to membership funding over the three years. The protected party is the association’s small professional staff and its current programme participants; the linear glide gives the association three budget cycles to rebuild on a subscription base.
• Affected groups: The Honvédelmi Sportszövetség and its staff; current participants in its programmes.

Kulturális és hagyományőrző szervezetek, Katonai Emlékpark, Hadisírgondozás (Cultural and tradition-keeping organisations, Military Memorial Park, war-grave care)

• Current allocation: 2,469.4 millió Ft (Kulturális és hagyományőrző szervezetek támogatása — cultural and tradition- keeping organisations 2,121.0; Katonai Emlékpark Közhasznú Nonprofit Kft. — Military Memorial Park 318.4; Hadisírgondozással és hadisírkutatással kapcsolatos szervezetek — war-grave care and research organisations 30.0)
• Classification: Phase-Out (3 years)
• Rationale: Military-tradition organisations, a memorial park, and war-grave-keeping associations are heritage and commemorative activities. They are not defence capabilities and not rights- protection functions; they are subjective allocations toward cultural goods that political officeholders have chosen to fund. War-grave care has the strongest claim of the three — the dignified maintenance of military graves is close to the war-care reasoning — but at 30.0 millió Ft it is a rounding line, and the broader category is heritage subsidy. These activities have genuine constituencies who would fund and organise them voluntarily, as heritage and commemorative associations do across Europe; a phased exit lets them transition to membership, donation, and where appropriate municipal funding rather than chapter-level transfer.
• Transition mechanism: Three-year linear phase-out. War-grave obligations arising from treaty commitments, if any are identified during year 1, are carved out and retained; the residual heritage and tradition-keeping subsidy glides to zero over three years as the organisations rebuild on voluntary funding.
• Affected groups: Military-heritage and tradition-keeping associations; the Katonai Emlékpark; their staff and members.

Nemzeti Sportfejlesztési és Módszertani Intézet (National Sports Development and Methodology Institute)

• Current allocation: 4,341.5 millió Ft (személyi 2,328.1; járulékok 304.1; dologi 1,616.9; beruházások 92.4)
• Classification: Phase-Out (2 years)
• Rationale: A state institute for sport development and methodology produces coaching frameworks, methodological guidance, and sport-development planning. There is no calculation by which the state determines the optimal coaching method or the optimal sport-development plan: the dispersed knowledge of coaches, clubs, and athletes cannot be aggregated by a central methodology office, and a state institute that attempts this produces documents rather than the thing itself.² The “seen” is a state institute producing documents; the “unseen” is that voluntary sport federations, clubs, and the international governing bodies of each sport already produce coaching methodology, and do so closer to the activity. The function is a discretionary allocation, not a rights-protection function. The protected party is the institute’s payroll — identifiable from the chapter’s own table.
• Transition mechanism: Two-year severance-with-overlap. The payroll component is 2,632.2 millió Ft (személyi juttatások 2,328.1 + munkaadói járulékok 304.1, taken directly from the chapter table). Permanent staff keep full salary for up to 24 months while free to take private-sector or federation employment; the non-payroll component (dologi 1,616.9 + beruházások 92.4 = 1,709.4 millió Ft) ends in year 1. Methodological work that individual federations want continued they fund themselves.
• Affected groups: Roughly the staff funded by a 2,632.2 millió Ft payroll line; sport federations that currently receive the institute’s methodological output free.

Országos Sportegészségügyi Intézet (National Sports Health Institute)

• Current allocation: 4,551.7 millió Ft (személyi 3,615.7; járulékok 470.0; dologi 426.0; beruházások 40.0), against 4,266.1 millió Ft of its own operating revenue
• Classification: Nominal Freeze
• Rationale: The Országos Sportegészségügyi Intézet (often “OSEI” / the “sportkórház”) is a sports-medicine clinic. It is treated differently from the other sport lines for one concrete reason visible in the chapter’s own tables: it earns 4,266.1 millió Ft of operating revenue against a 4,551.7 millió Ft expenditure allocation — it recovers roughly 94% of its cost from charges for the services it provides. A clinic that already operates almost entirely on a fee basis is close to the voluntary-financing benchmark the framework points toward; its near-cost-recovery is evidence that sports medicine is a service citizens, clubs, and athletes will pay for. The honest classification is not a phase-out of the institution but a freeze of the residual ~286 millió Ft subsidy gap, with the medium-term path being full cost recovery or conversion to an independent clinic operating on its fee income.
• Transition mechanism: Hold the nominal allocation; the residual subsidy erodes in real terms at roughly 2.5% annually. Review within the freeze period for conversion to a self-financing clinic on its existing fee base.
• Affected groups: Athletes and clubs using the clinic; institute staff. The fee-paying user base is unaffected — they already fund the bulk of the service.

Versenysport, utánpótlás-nevelés és sportakadémiák (Competitive sport, youth development and sport academies)

• Current allocation: 46,252.4 millió Ft, comprising Utánpótlás-nevelési feladatok, sportiskolai program és sportakadémiák (youth development, sport-school programme and state-recognised sport academies) 32,428.4; Versenysport, olimpiai, paralimpiai felkészülés (competitive sport, Olympic and Paralympic preparation) 10,848.2; Tarpa Nagyközség sportkoncepciója (Tarpa village sport concept and infrastructure) 200.0; Magyar Sportcsillagok Ösztöndíj Program (Hungarian Sport Stars Scholarship) 275.0; Doppingellenes tevékenység (anti-doping activity) 620.0; Sportegészségügyi és sporttudományi innováció (sport-health and sport-science innovation) 521.0; Diák- és hallgatói sport (school and university sport) 753.2; Sport népszerűsítése, Sportoló Nemzet Program (sport promotion, “Sporting Nation Programme”) 606.6
• Classification: Phase-Out (4 years)
• Rationale: This block is the operating subsidy of competitive and elite-pathway sport. The seen is a stream of medals, academy graduates, and national-team results. The unseen is the cost-bearer. Hungary’s elite-sport budget is funded from general taxation — overwhelmingly from labour and consumption taxes paid by working households. The cumulative wedge on a Hungarian wage-earner is not the visible 15% personal income tax: SzocHo (employer social contribution) at 13% sits on top of gross wage before take-home, SZJA at 15% and the 18.5% employee contribution come out of it, so roughly 37 Ft of every 100 Ft of total employer cost reaches the state before the worker spends anything; ÁFA at 27% on most spending then takes a further 13-14 Ft of the original 100; excise duty on fuel, gas, alcohol and tobacco adds 40-60% to the shelf or pump price of those categories. The cumulative effective state take from full employer compensation is in the 55-60% range for a typical working household. That is who funds the 46,252.4 millió Ft in this block. A worker on the roughly 560,900 Ft median monthly gross wage (KSH, December 2024)³ carries, very roughly, on the order of 10,000-12,000 Ft per year of this block alone, across the full tax wedge — for an activity whose benefit is concentrated on a small population of competitive athletes and academy entrants. The case here is not that competitive sport has no value; it is that elite athletic achievement is a consumption good whose enthusiasts, sponsors, broadcasters, and the athletes’ own families value it intensely and would fund it through clubs, ticket sales, broadcast rights, and sponsorship — and that compelling a wage-earner whose own child plays unsubsidised recreational sport to fund the academy pathway of an unrelated elite athlete is a discretionary allocation by political officeholders, not a rights-protection function. Anti-doping (620.0 millió Ft) is the one component with a stronger claim: anti-doping testing is a precondition of credible international competition and is part of the regulatory furniture the international federations themselves require — but it is small, and on any honest accounting it would be funded by the competitive- sport sector it polices rather than by general taxation.
• Transition mechanism: Four-year linear phase-out. The horizon is set by the reliance of athletes mid-pathway and academies mid-cohort: an academy intake and an Olympic cycle should be allowed to complete rather than be stranded. Year 1 freezes intake commitments at current levels and publishes the glide path; over four years the subsidy declines to zero as clubs, federations, sponsors and broadcast income take up the funding. Anti-doping is carved out during year 1 and either retained as a small regulatory line or transferred to sector funding.
• Affected groups: Sport academies and their current cohorts; competitive athletes mid-pathway; coaching staff; youth-sport programmes. The protected interest is the in-flight cohort, which the four-year glide is designed to let complete.

Sportköztestületek, federation transfers, athlete annuities and recognition

• Current allocation: 60,274.7 millió Ft, comprising Sportköztestületek támogatása (sport public-body / chamber subsidy) 1,133.0; Nemzetközi Sportszövetségek szakmai feladatainak támogatása (support to international sport federations’ work) 839.9; A Magyar Labdarúgó Szövetség feladatainak támogatása (support to the Hungarian Football Federation) 16,231.0; Olimpiai és Nemzet Sportolója járadék (Olympic and “Athlete of the Nation” annuity) 11,054.2; Gerevich-ösztöndíj és egyéb támogatások (Gerevich scholarship and other support) 1,238.6; Sportteljesítmények elismerése (recognition of sporting achievement) 1,353.6; Sportági fejlesztési koncepciók (sport-specific development concepts) 24,625.5; Kiemelt Edző és Kiemelt Utánpótlás Edző Program (Priority Coach and Priority Youth Coach Programme) 2,068.6; Hiszek Benned Sport Program (“I Believe in You” sport programme) 900.0; Fogyatékosok sportja ernyőszervezeteinek támogatása (umbrella organisations of disability sport) 608.0; Kincstárt megillető díjak (treasury fees) 122.3; Nemzetközi Sportszövetségek (international sport federation support, separate line) — included above
• Classification: Phase-Out (4 years)
• Rationale: This block is the clearest example in the chapter of the mechanism the analysis names repeatedly: a discretionary allocation by political officeholders to organised constituencies, with the cost spread diffusely across taxpayers. The largest single line — 24,625.5 millió Ft for “sport-specific development concepts” — and the 16,231.0 millió Ft transfer to the Magyar Labdarúgó Szövetség are transfers to sport federations and to football in particular. Football is a professional spectator sport with broadcast revenue, ticket income, sponsorship, and transfer markets; the case that the activity could be financed voluntarily is not theoretical, it is how professional football is financed almost everywhere. A federation that receives a 16,231.0 millió Ft state transfer has, by that fact, a professional and institutional dependence on the line that produces a structural lobby for its preservation independent of the sporting value it delivers — the recipient organisation will defend the transfer because the transfer funds the organisation. The athlete annuities (Olimpiai és Nemzet Sportolója járadék, 11,054.2 millió Ft; Gerevich-ösztöndíj, 1,238.6 millió Ft) are a different sub-case: they are recurring payments to identifiable individuals who have a reasonable reliance expectation, and the phased exit must protect existing annuitants. Disability-sport umbrella support (608.0 millió Ft) also warrants separate handling on the same reliance grounds and the genuine thinness of voluntary funding in that segment.
• Transition mechanism: Four-year linear phase-out for the federation-transfer and development-concept components. The protected interests are split: (a) existing recipients of the Olympic and Athlete-of-the-Nation annuity and the Gerevich scholarship are grandfathered — current annuitants keep their entitlement, the line falling over time on cohort mortality as no new entrants are admitted; (b) the football and other federation transfers and the development-concept line glide to zero over four years, the horizon chosen to let federations rebuild commercial, sponsorship and membership funding rather than collapse a competition structure mid-season; (c) disability-sport umbrella funding is carved out for separate review during year 1 rather than phased on the same schedule. The 4,083.9 millió Ft and related figures in this block fund organisations with genuine commercial alternatives; the glide gives them four budget cycles to use them.
• Affected groups: The Magyar Labdarúgó Szövetség and other sport federations; existing athlete annuitants (protected); coaching-programme participants; disability-sport umbrella organisations (carved out for separate review).

Kiemelt sportegyesületek és sportlétesítmény-fejlesztések (Priority sport clubs and sport-facility development)

• Current allocation: 20,125.5 millió Ft (Kiemelt sportegyesületek működése és sportlétesítmény fenntartása — priority sport clubs’ operation and facility maintenance 16,710.0; Sportlétesítmény-fejlesztések, állagmegóvások — facility development and conservation 3,415.5)
• Classification: Phase-Out (4 years)
• Rationale: Subsidising the operating costs of named “priority” sport clubs is a transfer to specific organisations selected by political officeholders. A sport club is the paradigm voluntary association: members, supporters, sponsors, and ticket-buyers fund sport clubs across the world. State selection of which clubs are “priority” clubs is a subjective allocation with no calculation behind it — there is no metric by which the state determines the optimal level of subsidy to a given club, only a political judgement about which clubs to favour. The seen is a maintained facility and a funded club; the unseen is both the taxpayer and the unsubsidised competitor club that must cover its own costs while a selected rival has them covered, a distortion of the competitive field that the subsidy itself creates.
• Transition mechanism: Four-year linear phase-out, the horizon matching the competitive-sport block so that clubs facing both this line and the federation-transfer phase-out have a coherent single glide path. Facility-conservation obligations on state-owned buildings transfer to whichever body holds the asset (see the Nemzeti Sportinfrastruktúra Ügynökség line below).
• Affected groups: Priority sport clubs and their staff; unsubsidised competitor clubs (currently disadvantaged by the line).

A HUNGARORING Sport Zrt. és az autó-motorsport szakmai feladatai (HUNGARORING Sport Zrt. and motorsport)

• Current allocation: 43,267.5 millió Ft (működési 19,959.3; felhalmozási 23,308.2)
• Classification: Immediate Cut
• Rationale: The HUNGARORING is the circuit that hosts the Hungarian round of a globally televised, commercially saturated motorsport championship. A state company operating a Formula-One- grade racing circuit is operating a commercial venue in one of the most heavily monetised sports in the world — race-day ticketing, hospitality, broadcast and hosting arrangements, sponsorship, and year-round circuit-hire revenue are the normal funding model of a motorsport venue. There is no rights-protection function here, no calculation difficulty that justifies state operation, no involuntary-harm rationale, and no reliance chain tying ordinary citizens’ life plans to the line; the protected constituency is a state company and the motorsport sector, and the cost is borne by the general taxpayer. The 43,267.5 millió Ft is a subsidy to a commercial entertainment venue. There is no honest classification other than Immediate Cut: the circuit is a viable commercial asset and should be operated as one — sold to, or run by, a commercial operator that funds it from its own substantial revenue, or run by the state on a strict commercial basis with no call on general taxation. The contractual point: a multi-year race-hosting agreement, if one binds the 2026 cycle, is a parameter of the transition path — the obligation under any existing signed contract is honoured to its term as a contract- run-off cost, but the line is not renewed and the activity does not receive a fresh chapter allocation. Net of any contractually committed run-off, the line is cut in a single budget cycle.
• Transition mechanism: Immediate cut from the next budget cycle. Existing signed race-hosting and capital contracts are honoured to their term as a documented run-off cost; the venue is transferred to commercial operation (sale or commercial mandate) with no further general-tax subsidy.
• Affected groups: HUNGARORING Sport Zrt. and its staff; the motorsport sector. The venue itself is an asset that retains value under commercial operation.

Nemzeti Sportinfrastruktúra Ügynökség (National Sports Infrastructure Agency)

• Current allocation: 58,005.4 millió Ft of expenditure under title 22 (Ingatlanok fenntartása és üzemeltetése — property maintenance and operation 40,479.0; A Nemzeti Sportinfrastruktúra Ügynökség működésének támogatása — agency operating subsidy 13,072.0; Ingatlan beruházások — property investment 1,498.2; forrásjuttatások to sport companies 2,526.8; egyéb vagyongazdálkodási kiadások — other asset-management 242.0; múzeumi tevékenység — museum activity 187.4), against 17,126.0 millió Ft of Bérleti és egyéb hasznosítási díj (rental and other utilisation fee) revenue
• Classification: Phase-Out (5 years)
• Rationale: The Nemzeti Sportinfrastruktúra Ügynökség (NSÜ) is the agency created to own and operate the state’s accumulated stadium and sport-facility stock — roughly 153 state sports properties were placed under its asset management when it was established.⁴ The agency is, in the most direct sense, evidence of the underlying problem rather than a solution to it: a dedicated state agency to operate sport venues exists because the state has acquired and built a stock of sport venues large enough to require one. The chapter’s own figures show the structural shape — 58,005.4 millió Ft of expenditure against 17,126.0 millió Ft of rental and utilisation revenue, a venue portfolio recovering under 30% of its cost from the market. A privately owned arena or stadium is expected to cover its operating cost from event income, rental, and hospitality; a portfolio recovering 30% is a portfolio held for reasons other than its market viability, with the gap charged to general taxation. The honest classification is to wind down the agency in parallel with the underlying activity — divest the venue stock to commercial operators, municipalities willing to fund their local facilities from local revenue, or the clubs that use them — rather than to keep a permanent state agency operating a permanently loss-making portfolio. The five-year horizon reflects that orderly divestment of a large property portfolio is a multi-year process, not a single-cycle action; museum activity (187.4 millió Ft) and any heritage-listed venue are carved out for separate handling.
• Transition mechanism: Five-year phase-out parallel to divestment of the venue stock. Year 1 the agency publishes the portfolio and a divestment schedule; venues are transferred over five years to commercial operators, to municipalities that elect to fund them locally, or to user clubs, with the agency’s operating subsidy declining as the portfolio it manages shrinks. The agency’s own staff are the protected payroll within the operating-subsidy component; venues retaining genuine value transfer with their operating revenue attached.
• Affected groups: The NSÜ and its staff; municipalities and clubs that would receive divested venues (and must then decide whether to fund them locally); current venue users.

Revenue Items

The chapter records 44,934.7 millió Ft of total revenue against 2,156,280.7 millió Ft of expenditure. None of it is tax revenue; all of it is operating revenue, fee income, and a capital component.

• Name: Honvédelmi tárca működési bevétele (Ministry of Defence operating revenue) — the működési bevétel recorded across the defence titles, including 20,252.7 millió Ft against titles 1-8

• Current yield: 20,252.7 millió Ft (defence titles 1-8) plus 3,289.9 millió Ft of felhalmozási (capital) revenue against the same titles

• Type: Fee / operating revenue

• Notes: Operating receipts of the defence ministry and its organisations — service charges, asset utilisation, recoveries. This revenue is internal to the defence function; it is unaffected by the analysis above, which leaves the defence titles classified as Keep.

• Name: Országos Sportegészségügyi Intézet működési bevétele (National Sports Health Institute operating revenue)

• Current yield: 4,266.1 millió Ft

• Type: Fee / charge

• Notes: Fees charged for sports-medicine services. This revenue is the evidence cited above that the institute operates close to cost recovery; under the Nominal Freeze classification and a path toward full self-financing, this fee revenue would persist and grow as a share of the institute’s funding.

• Name: Bérleti és egyéb hasznosítási díj (rental and other utilisation fee — Nemzeti Sportinfrastruktúra Ügynökség)

• Current yield: 17,126.0 millió Ft

• Type: Fee / charge (venue rental and utilisation)

• Notes: Venue rental and utilisation income of the state sport- property portfolio. Under the Phase-Out classification of the NSÜ, this revenue stream transfers with the venues as they are divested — a commercial operator or municipality acquiring a venue acquires its rental income alongside its operating cost. The revenue does not disappear; it ceases to be a chapter revenue line and becomes the income of whoever operates the divested venue.

• Name: Sport intézmények egyéb működési és felhalmozási bevétele (other sport-institution operating and capital revenue)

• Current yield: approximately 40.0 millió Ft of capital revenue recorded against the sport-institution titles

• Type: Other / capital

• Notes: Minor capital receipts. Immaterial to the analysis.

No major tax revenue items appear in this chapter; the revenue is entirely fees, charges, operating receipts, and minor capital income. A web_search rate lookup of the kind applied to SZJA or ÁFA is not applicable here.

Chapter Summary

Classification	Count	Total (millió Ft)
Immediate Cut	1	43,267.5
Phase-Out	7	195,552.8
Nominal Freeze	1	4,551.7
Keep	10	1,912,908.7
Total	19	2,156,280.7

Revenue	Total (millió Ft)
Total chapter revenue	44,934.7

Phase-Out detail (steady-state, full-saving figures): Honvédelmi Sportszövetség 4,083.9; cultural/heritage/war-grave organisations 2,469.4; Nemzeti Sportfejlesztési és Módszertani Intézet 4,341.5; competitive sport and youth-development block 46,252.4; federation transfers, development concepts and athlete annuities block 60,274.7; priority sport clubs and facility development 20,125.5; Nemzeti Sportinfrastruktúra Ügynökség 58,005.4. The Phase-Out total of 195,552.8 millió Ft is roughly 9% of the chapter envelope; the Immediate Cut of 43,267.5 millió Ft is the HUNGARORING. Defence (titles 1-8) is classified Keep in full — 1,919,562.0 millió Ft — less the 4,083.9 millió Ft Honvédelmi Sportszövetség and the 2,469.4 millió Ft heritage block reclassified to Phase-Out, so the defence-side Keep is 1,912,908.7 millió Ft; the Országos Sportegészségügyi Intézet, with its 94% cost recovery, is the single Nominal Freeze.

Year-1 net saving across the chapter is 90,425.5 millió Ft (the full 43,267.5 millió Ft HUNGARORING cut plus the first-year net saving of each phase-out glide); the steady-state saving once every phase-out completes is 239,958.2 millió Ft, none of it drawn from the defence function.

Key Observations

• The chapter is two chapters. Defence and sport are joined only by the administrative accident that the sport portfolio reports to the defence minister. The defence function — the standing force, its equipment, its intelligence service, its NATO obligations, war care — is the clearest concentration of rights-protection and treaty-bound spending in the entire budget, and almost all of it is Keep. The sport portfolio is, with one fee-recovering exception, a set of discretionary allocations to organised constituencies. The same chapter contains the strongest case for state financing in the budget and one of the clearer cases against it.

• Keep is not a blank cheque on defence. The defence titles are classified Keep, but the defence procurement function carries a specific, recurring qualification: a monopsony buyer of major military platforms has no market price signal telling it whether it bought the right mix at the right price. That is a genuine calculation difficulty, and it is why the analysis attaches a procurement-transparency discipline — published competitive tenders, per-unit cost disclosure, external cost audit — to the capability-development block and the Védelmi Beszerzési Ügynökség. The recommendation is not a cut; it is the discipline that substitutes, however imperfectly, for the price signal the function structurally lacks.

• Elite sport is funded by the labour and consumption tax wedge. The competitive-sport, federation-transfer, priority-club, and infrastructure lines together exceed 220,000 millió Ft. That money is drawn from a cumulative effective state take on a typical working household in the 55-60% range of total employer compensation — the 37% payroll wedge, plus ÁFA at 27%, plus excise. The beneficiary is a small, organised population of elite athletes, federations, and selected clubs; the cost-bearer is every wage- earning household, including those whose own children play recreational sport with no subsidy at all. Naming the mechanism rather than the recipient: the funding formula routes general tax revenue toward a politically selected set of sport organisations that develop, in turn, a professional dependence on the transfer that makes them a structural lobby for its preservation.

• The infrastructure agency is the symptom, not the cure. The Nemzeti Sportinfrastruktúra Ügynökség exists because the state has accumulated a stadium stock large enough to require a dedicated agency to run it. Its own figures — 58,005.4 millió Ft of cost against 17,126.0 millió Ft of venue revenue — show a portfolio recovering under 30% of its cost. A privately held arena is expected to cover its operating cost from event income. A 30% recovery rate is the financial signature of venues held for reasons other than their market viability, with the gap charged to the general taxpayer. The honest reform winds the agency down in parallel with divesting the venue stock, rather than treating a permanent loss-making portfolio as a fixed feature of the budget.

• Reliance is taken seriously, and it is unevenly distributed. The phase-outs in this chapter protect different parties on different schedules. Existing recipients of the Olympic and Athlete-of-the-Nation annuity and the Gerevich scholarship are grandfathered — current annuitants keep their entitlement, the line falling on cohort mortality. Institute staff are protected by severance-with-overlap. Federations and clubs get a four-year glide to rebuild commercial funding. War care and war-grave obligations, and disability-sport umbrella support, are carved out. The destination is classical-liberal; the method is rule-of-law, and the in-flight cohort — the academy intake, the athlete mid-Olympic-cycle, the existing annuitant — is allowed to complete rather than be stranded.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Sikeres toborzás / Magyar Honvédség létszáma. Honvedelem.hu (Ministry of Defence). 2024. https://honvedelem.hu/hirek/sikeres-toborzas.html. Fillable establishment ≈34,200 posts at end-2024; parliamentary-authorised ceiling ≈37,650; force grew by over 3,000 in 2024. ↩

2. Hayek, F.A. (1945). The Use of Knowledge in Society. American Economic Review, 35(4): 519–530. The argument: prices and other market signals aggregate dispersed local knowledge that no central planner or institute can replicate. ↩

3. KSH, Keresetek, 2024. december. Központi Statisztikai Hivatal. 2025. https://www.ksh.hu/gyorstajekoztatok/ker/ker2412.html. Median gross monthly earnings of full-time employees: 560,900 Ft (December 2024, +13.1% year-on-year). ↩

4. 2022. évi LVII. törvény egyes állami sportcélú közfeladatok ellátásának rendjéről és szervezeti kereteiről. Nemzeti Jogszabálytár / Hatályos Jogszabályok Gyűjteménye. 2022. https://net.jogtar.hu/jogszabaly?docid=a2200057.tv. The Act establishes the Nemzeti Sportinfrastruktúra Ügynökség, under whose asset management approximately 153 state sport properties were placed.
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