From the 2026 budget audit
293 million Ft in running costs for a think-tank with no price signal
The operating budget of a state research institute that produces analysis no market can value — and that the government has already decided to close.
About 73 Ft per taxpayer per year — the overheads of a public-sector institute the state's own reform agenda deems unnecessary.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: office costs, subscriptions, and procurement for an institute conducting strategic research. The unseen: the worker funding an institution whose output cannot be tested against whether anyone would voluntarily pay for it.
Objection
"You can't close a research institute overnight — ongoing projects need time to wind down."
Answer
The personnel lines are protected with a two-year bridged transition. Operating costs — rent, procurement, subscriptions — carry no comparable reliance interest of permanent employees. They hit zero in the first budget cycle while staff retain full salary. No project is stranded; only the overhead continues beyond what the bridge requires.
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The analyst's verdict
Operating Costs (Institute for National Strategy)
Rationale
The Institute conducts research, surveys and analysis on Hungarian heritage and the Hungarian communities of the Carpathian Basin. Whatever the merit of that research, it is not a rights-protection function, not a constitutional precondition, and not a protective response to involuntary harm. It is a state-funded think-tank — and a state cannot determine through a budget line the optimal quantity or direction of strategic research, because there is no price signal telling it whether the research is worth its cost. The Hungarian government itself has reached a structurally similar conclusion: the Institute is among the seventy-plus state bodies slated for elimination or restructuring, with its functions to be absorbed by the Veritas Institute.[^1] When the government's own bureaucracy-reduction programme already marks a body for closure, the classical-liberal recommendation is simply to follow through cleanly rather than fold it into a successor.
Transition mechanism
The 292.9 millió Ft operating-cost line and the 31.7 millió Ft capital line carry no reliance interest of permanent employees; they hit zero in the first budget cycle.
Affected groups
The Institute's permanent staff (a small cohort); contracted suppliers, whose contracts run off rather than being abrogated.
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