From the 2026 budget audit
A politician names a 'mission' — and 11 billion Ft chases it.
The Missions Sub-fund finances projects selected for how well they serve a state-designated theme, with no buyer to test value and no peer review independent of the mission frame.
11,013 millió Ft — around 1,140 Ft per employed worker — directed at projects scored on conformity to a political priority, not on scientific or commercial merit.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: themed research programmes with official names, projects aligned to government-set societal goals. The unseen: the research question no committee would fund because it crosses the mission's grain — the work that challenges the priority rather than fulfilling it.
Objection
"Mission-oriented research is how the EU's Horizon programmes work — it's a standard international model."
Answer
Horizon missions are set and reviewed by multi-country peer bodies with academic input and exit criteria; they are revised when evidence changes. A national missions sub-fund set by a single government ministry is the same label on a different mechanism: discretionary allocation by a political officeholder with no independent review and no observable quantity it is converging toward. The mechanism is the same whether the mission is renewable energy or national competitiveness — the allocation follows the priority list, not the evidence.
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The analyst's verdict
Missions Sub-fund
Rationale
The Missions Sub-fund finances "mission-oriented" research and innovation programmes — thematic initiatives in which the state designates a societal goal (a "mission") and funds projects directed at it. This is the most calculation-exposed of the three sub-funds. The Innovation Sub-fund at least funds firms whose project's eventual value the market will later test; the Research Sub-fund funds research whose value the research community can assess by peer judgement. The Missions Sub-fund funds projects selected for conformity to a state-designated mission — the allocation is doubly political: a political officeholder sets the mission, and a committee then scores projects on how well they serve it. There is no buyer, no peer-review discipline independent of the mission frame, and no observable quantity the allocation is converging toward. The sub-fund is small relative to the chapter, and its classification is obvious from the mechanism: a state body picking thematic priorities and funding projects against them is discretionary allocation with no external check. It is grouped with the other two sub-funds on the same five-year horizon.
Transition mechanism
Phase-Out (5 years), aligned with the Research and Innovation Sub-funds. In-flight mission-project contracts honoured to term; no new mission calls; the line reaches zero by year 5 as existing commitments complete. No separate replacement structure: mission-oriented projects with genuine research merit are eligible for institutional block funding via the research institutions; those that are not are simply not financed by compulsory levy.
Affected groups
Project teams holding current mission-programme grants — a small population given the 11,012.9 millió Ft envelope — lose the grant stream over five years and migrate to contract research or institutional funding. No cohort relies on this line at scale.
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