From the 2026 budget audit
693 million Ft a year for medals and ceremonies — held flat.
The state-honours system is a bounded ceremonial function every republic maintains, but there is no case for growing it. Freezing the allocation lets real-terms erosion do the disciplining over a decade.
Roughly 170 Ft per taxpayer per year — 693.1 millió Ft total, funding the production and ceremony of state decorations, not cash stipends.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the medals, orders, and ceremonies through which the Republic recognises exceptional service. The unseen: the wage-earner whose tax funds a line that, left to grow with inflation, would expand a ceremonial budget beyond what any efficiency argument justifies.
Objection
"State honours recognise genuine achievement — this is a small, harmless line."
Answer
Agreed it is small and the function is legitimate — which is precisely why a nominal freeze costs nothing in ceremony while removing the automatic budget growth that compounds over a decade. Holding the allocation flat at 693.1 millió Ft lets inflation quietly trim the real value by roughly 20% over ten years without abolishing a single decoration.
Share if you think even ceremonial budgets should earn their growth rather than receive it automatically.
The analyst's verdict
State Honours and Decorations
Rationale
This line funds the production and conferral costs of the state-honours system — the medals, orders, and decorations conferred in the name of the Republic. The Fundamental Law grants the head of state the power to confer state honours; that grant is a permission, not a funding mandate, and so the constitutional standing of the office does not by itself carry this line to Keep. The honours system is a long-standing, bounded ceremonial function of a kind every European republic and monarchy maintains; it is neither a rights-protection function nor a concentrated rent. It is closest to a bounded, self-limiting ceremonial line: the case for outright abolition is weak, the case for expansion is absent, and the administrative cost of eliminating a 693.1 millió Ft ceremonial line would not be repaid by the saving. A nominal freeze holds the allocation flat and lets typical inflation erode its real share by roughly 20-25% over a decade — a quiet, low-cost discipline on a line that does not warrant growth.
Transition mechanism
Hold the allocation at 693.1 millió Ft in nominal terms across the medium term; do not index to inflation. Real erosion at ~2.5% average inflation reduces the real value by approximately 173 millió Ft over ten years.
Affected groups
Recipients of state honours (no cash transfer is at stake — the line funds production and ceremony, not stipends); the craftspeople and suppliers who produce the decorations.
Free Society Institute
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