The Courts

Rationale

This is the salary base of the working judiciary — judges, court secretaries, clerks, and administrative staff across the járásbíróság, törvényszék, and ítélőtábla tiers. Adjudication is the archetypal rights-protection function: the enforcement of contract and the secure resolution of property disputes is what makes voluntary exchange and capital formation possible in the first place. There is no calculation-problem objection to financing it, because the budget is not trying to price a contestable output against subjective consumer preference — it is funding the constitutional machinery through which disputes are resolved. The honest classical-liberal position is that this is core state, and the line is kept. Keep does not mean exempt from scrutiny. The size of this line relative to the chapter — 69% of the entire judicial envelope is the ordinary-court payroll — is itself a signal worth reading. A judiciary is expensive in proportion to the volume of disputes the rest of the legal and administrative order pushes through it. Where the state criminalises conduct that need not be criminal, multiplies licensing regimes whose breach generates litigation, or operates monopolies and discretionary allocation schemes whose contested awards end up before administrative courts, the court payroll rises as a downstream cost. The line stays; but a leaner state upstream is what eventually makes the line itself lighter, and that is a finding for the chapters that generate the caseload, not for this one.

Rationale

Materials, utilities, IT services, building running costs, postage, expert-witness fees, and the other recurrent non-personnel costs of operating the court network. These are the unavoidable operating inputs of a kept function. There is no rights-protection objection to financing the heating, lighting, and case-management software of a courthouse. This is the line where operating-efficiency review has the most purchase, and Keep should not be read as "above examination". Court digitisation — electronic filing, remote hearings where due process permits, automated case-allocation — offers the most promising route to continuous operating-efficiency improvement without touching the rights-protection core. The line is kept at its current level; the recommendation is continuous procurement and process review, not a budget-line cut.

Rationale

The employer-side social contribution (szociális hozzájárulási adó, levied at 13% on the gross wage bill) and related employer charges attached to the court payroll. It is an accounting consequence of the personnel line and follows its classification: the courts are kept, so the employer wedge on their payroll is kept. It is worth naming what this line is, because it recurs in every ministry and institutional chapter and is rarely seen for what it is. The 20,682.2 millió Ft here is not a separate programme — it is the cost the state imposes on itself as an employer, the same wedge it imposes on every private employer in the country. For a court clerk whose work the state values at 100 forints of total employer cost, roughly 13 of those forints are consumed by this contribution before the clerk's gross wage is even calculated; SZJA at 15% and the employee social-insurance contribution of 18.5% then take their share of what remains, so that of every 100 forints of employer cost only about 59 reach the clerk as take-home pay, and 27% of that take-home is captured again at the till through ÁFA at 27% on most spending. The cumulative wedge on a public-sector wage is in the same 55–60% range as on a private one. The line is kept because the courts are kept; the observation that belongs in the whitepaper is that the size of the state's own payroll-tax bill is a measure of how heavy the wedge is for everyone.

Rationale

The salary base of the Kúria, Hungary's supreme judicial body, responsible for ensuring the uniform application of law through its review jurisdiction and its uniformity decisions (jogegységi határozatok). A court of final instance that resolves divergent interpretations of law is part of the rights-protection architecture: predictability of adjudication depends on a body that settles conflicting lower-court interpretations. The line is kept. The classical-liberal frame is institution-blind on the question of who sits on the court — it asks only whether the function is a legitimate state function, and final-instance adjudication is. Debates about the appointment process for the Kúria's president and about the court's independence are real and consequential, but they are governance questions about how the kept institution is constituted, not budget-classification questions. The function is financed; the institutional-design questions belong to constitutional reform, not to the expenditure taxonomy.

Rationale

A chapter-managed capital appropriation funding judicial-sector investment projects centrally rather than through an individual institution's own Beruházások line — typically larger cross-cutting projects such as court-network IT systems, integrated case-management platforms, or shared infrastructure. It is the capital budget of a kept function and follows the same classification as the institutional capital lines: kept, subject to ordinary capital-project appraisal. The chapter-managed form is an appropriation-routing choice, not a different kind of spending.

Rationale

A chapter-managed operating appropriation funding cross-cutting operational costs of the justice system that are not carried on an individual court's own dologi line — shared services, centrally-procured operating inputs, sector-wide programmes. It is the operating budget of a kept function; kept, subject to procurement discipline. As with the capital appropriation above, the chapter-managed routing does not change what the money does. The appropriation also encompasses an earmarked reserve (célelőirányzat) that funds two related liabilities of the state acting as a litigant and as the operator of the court system. The first is the statutory compensation payable where a civil proceeding has run excessively long — a remedy introduced into Hungarian law for the unreasonable delay of proceedings, the domestic counterpart to the right to trial within a reasonable time. The second is the cost the state bears for legal fees and adverse costs where it loses litigation in which it is a party. Both belong to the rights-protection function rather than alongside it. Compensation for excessively delayed proceedings is the state honouring an enforceable individual right against itself — precisely the rule-of-law-against-the-state mechanism a classical-liberal frame treats as core, not as discretionary largesse. Adverse-costs liability is the ordinary consequence of the state being subject to the same litigation rules as any other party; a state that could not lose a suit and pay costs would not be a state under law. The line is kept. There is a sharper point hidden in the first half of this reserve, and it belongs in the whitepaper rather than in a recommendation to cut the line. A standing budget reserve for compensating litigants whose cases took too long is the price of a court system carrying more cases than it can resolve promptly. The 150.0 millió Ft is not a failure of this line — the line correctly honours the right — it is a small visible marker of the larger unseen cost of judicial congestion: the businesses whose disputed receivables are frozen for years, the property transactions that cannot complete, the contracts written defensively because enforcement is slow. The reserve is kept because the right is real; the lasting fix for its underlying cause is a lighter caseload, which is the work of the chapters that generate litigation, not of this one.

Rationale

Capital investment in the ordinary-court estate and equipment — courthouse construction and refurbishment, IT hardware, security installations. Capital expenditure on the infrastructure of a kept rights-protection function is itself kept. The capital stock of a courthouse is not a discretionary subsidy; it is the physical precondition of the function.

Rationale

The employer wedge on the Kúria payroll. Follows the personnel line: the Kúria is kept, so the social-contribution charge on its payroll is kept.

Rationale

Recurrent operating costs of the Kúria — premises, IT, legal databases, publication of uniformity decisions. Operating inputs of a kept function; kept, subject to ordinary procurement discipline.

Rationale

The Országos Bírói Tanács (National Judicial Council, OBT) is the elected self-governance body of the Hungarian judiciary. It is composed of judges elected by their peers and exercises oversight of judicial administration, including a supervisory role over the president of the Országos Bírósági Hivatal (National Office for the Judiciary). This is not a discretionary patronage body or an oversight authority bolted on to police a state-constructed market — the category AGENTS.md flags for sceptical examination. It is a constitutional element of judicial self-government, the mechanism by which the judiciary's independence from the executive is institutionally secured. Securing the independence of the rights-protection function is itself a rights-protection function. The line is kept. The distinction matters and is worth drawing precisely, because the framework's default scepticism toward "oversight bodies" could be mis-applied here. A procurement supervisor exists because the state buys too much; a gambling regulator exists because the state licenses what it need not license — those bodies are symptoms of an over-extended state, and the honest classification phases them out alongside the activity that created them. The OBT is the opposite case: it does not police an over-extended state, it constrains the executive's reach into the judiciary. A classical-liberal frame that prizes the rule of law and the separation of powers funds exactly this. At 997.8 millió Ft for the whole body — under half of one per cent of the chapter — the fiscal stake is in any case immaterial; the classification is decided on principle, and the principle says keep.

Rationale

Capital investment in the Kúria's premises and equipment. Infrastructure of a kept function; kept.

Rationale

Renovation and maintenance of existing court buildings. As with Beruházások, this is the upkeep of the physical infrastructure of a kept function. Keeping a courthouse weatherproof and functional is not a candidate for phase-out.

Rationale

Recurrent operating costs of the OBT — meetings, premises, administrative support. Operating inputs of a kept constitutional body; kept.

Rationale

The employer wedge on the OBT payroll. Follows the personnel line; kept.

Rationale

A minor line covering cash payments administered through the courts to specified recipients — typically statutory payments to lay judges, jurors, or witnesses, or court-administered benefit transfers. At 71.4 millió Ft it is 0.03% of the chapter and is functionally part of the cost of operating proceedings. It follows the court function and is kept; its size does not warrant a separate transition analysis.

Rationale

Minor capital investment for the OBT. Infrastructure of a kept body; kept.

Rationale

A negligible residual operating line. Follows the OBT classification; kept.

Rationale

A negligible residual operating line (2.2 millió Ft, 0.001% of the chapter). It follows the Kúria's classification and does not warrant separate analysis.

Rationale

A negligible renovation line. Follows the OBT classification; kept.