From the 2026 budget audit
The state names one septic hauler, sets the price, then pays the loss — and calls it public interest.
280 million Ft funds the 'unrecovered costs' of a single state-designated septic-emptying provider — a state-constructed monopoly with a state-funded loss, in a market multiple licensed haulers could serve competitively.
About 70 Ft per taxpayer per year — 280 million Ft total — subsidises the loss of one designated provider for a contestable service any licensed hauler could deliver.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: households in non-sewered areas with a septic service at a capped price. The unseen: the cost-bearer who funds the designated provider's loss, and the competing haulers who cannot enter a market the state has pre-assigned to one operator.
Objection
"Septic emptying in rural areas without sewers is a genuine public need — private providers wouldn't serve isolated households."
Answer
Septic emptying is an ordinary contestable service: multiple licensed haulers can compete on price and reliability, and households can contract directly. The designation-and-subsidy arrangement removes that competition. The phase-out opens licensing to all qualified haulers; genuinely low-income households are supported through existing means-tested social assistance, not through a producer subsidy that benefits one designated operator.
Share if you think a monopoly subsidy is not the same as a public service.
The analyst's verdict
Support for the unrecovered costs of the designated provider for temporary collection of non-utility household sewage
Rationale
This is a small line, and its size is not the point — the principle scales regardless. It funds the "unrecovered costs" of a *designated* (`kijelölt`) public-interest provider for emptying septic systems in areas without sewer connection. The structure is the tell: the state designates a single provider, fixes the service, and then funds the gap between the price the provider may charge and its costs. That is a state-constructed monopoly with a state-funded loss — the regulator-and-subsidy pair is part of the construction, not a cure for a market failure. Septic emptying is an ordinary, contestable service: multiple licensed haulers can compete on price and reliability, and households can contract directly. The honest classification is a phase-out of the designation-and-subsidy arrangement, replacing it with open licensing of haulers and direct household payment, with targeted social support for genuinely low-income households folded into the existing social-assistance lines rather than delivered as a producer subsidy. Three years allows the designated provider's current obligations to run off and a competitive market to form.
Transition mechanism
Three-year linear wind-down of the cost-cover subsidy. Year one: open licensing of septic-emptying haulers in the affected areas. The designated provider competes on the same terms as new entrants; the central loss-cover falls to zero over three years.
Affected groups
The designated provider; households in non-sewered areas, who move to direct payment at competitively-set prices.
Free Society Institute
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