From the 2026 budget audit
1 billion Ft to run a registry of graves and monuments — held flat
The National Heritage Institute's 1,024 million Ft operating budget is frozen: the mandate is bounded, the stock of sites does not grow, and the real envelope shrinks with each year of inflation.
About 257 Ft per taxpayer per year for the overheads of maintaining Hungary's protected memorial registry and national graveyard.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the administration, procurement, and maintenance contracts that keep protected memorial sites registered and maintained. The unseen: the 224 million Ft in real-terms savings that a decade-long nominal freeze delivers silently — without closing an office or ending any custodial commitment.
Objection
"Costs rise with inflation — a nominal freeze means the Institute can't maintain the sites properly."
Answer
The Institute generates 225 million Ft of its own operating revenue from charges and registry activities. A nominal freeze on the state contribution, combined with that own-revenue base, is the starting point for a review of whether a heritage foundation could carry the mandate with greater independence from annual budget politics.
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The analyst's verdict
Operating Costs (National Heritage Institute)
Rationale
The Institute maintains the Nemzeti Sírkert (National Graveyard) and the registry of protected memorial sites — a bounded, finite custodial mandate. It is not a rights-protection function, but it is self-limiting: the stock of graves and memorial sites does not expand on a budget cycle. An outright cut would strand a custodial obligation toward physical heritage that has no private claimant ready to assume it; an expansion is unwarranted. Nominal freeze is the honest classification — hold the allocation flat and let inflation erode the real envelope by roughly 20-25% over a decade, during which the custodial arrangement can be reviewed against a foundation or trust model. The Institute is, like the Institute for National Strategy, named in the government's restructuring list with Veritas as successor;[^1] if that absorption proceeds, the freeze simply carries into the successor's books.
Transition mechanism
Hold nominal allocation at 2,477.1 millió Ft. Review within the decade for transfer of custodial functions to a heritage foundation funded partly by its own 225.0 millió Ft revenue stream.
Affected groups
None displaced in the freeze period; staff and custodial obligations continue.
Free Society Institute
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