From the 2026 budget audit
2 billion Ft a year to run a state foreign-policy think-tank
The Hungarian Institute of International Affairs receives 2,021 million Ft for research and analysis the diplomatic service, universities, and independent institutes already produce.
About 507 Ft per taxpayer per year for foreign-policy research the state cannot price — from a single transfer with no published cost breakdown.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: research on foreign policy, international relations, and geopolitics, produced by a state-funded institute. The unseen: the wage-earner whose tax pays for analysis that the diplomatic service commissions, that universities publish, and that independent think-tanks produce voluntarily — with no mechanism to test whether the state duplicate is worth its cost.
Objection
"Independent foreign-policy research requires institutional stability — private-sector think-tanks can't replace it."
Answer
Independent foreign-policy analysis thrives precisely when it is independent of the state budget. Research staff with analytical and language skills are among the most transferable of public-sector workers; the three-year phase-out gives them a 24-month bridged salary to find academic or private-sector positions. The analysis flags the payroll estimate as an approximation — the audited figure should replace it before implementation.
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The analyst's verdict
Hungarian Institute of International Affairs - Professional Tasks
Rationale
The transfer funds the professional research and analysis work of the foreign-affairs institute — a state-financed think-tank in the foreign-policy domain. As with the Institute for National Strategy, this is research, not a rights-protection or constitutional-precondition function, and the state cannot price whether the analysis is worth its cost. Foreign-policy analysis is, moreover, exactly the kind of work that universities, independent institutes and the diplomatic service itself produce; a dedicated state-funded transfer is not the only channel for it.
Transition mechanism
The transfer is a single figure with no internal breakdown, so the payroll component must be estimated for the severance computation. A publicly-funded research institute typically runs personnel and employer contributions at roughly half its operating budget; on that basis the payroll component is estimated at 1,010.8 millió Ft. Severance-with-overlap over three years: research staff retain salary for up to 24 months and may take academic or private employment in parallel. Net saving is 1,010.8 millió Ft in years 1-2 (the non-payroll half saved, the payroll half bridged) and the full 2,021.6 millió Ft from year 3. The payroll estimate should be replaced with the institute's audited figure before implementation; the analysis flags it as an estimate, not a fetched figure.
Affected groups
The institute's research staff, a small cohort with highly transferable analytical and language skills; the household path is academic or private-sector re-employment well inside the overlap window.
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