Ministry of the Interior

Rationale

As with the Klebelsberg line, the classification is not a phase-out of healthcare funding. Publicly-funded curative care is retained. The line is flagged because of how it is delivered: the state directly operates the hospital network and directly employs roughly 895 milliárd Ft of medical payroll, setting capacity, the specialty mix and the regional distribution of hospital resources administratively. Hungary supplies its own demonstration that this is not the only workable model. A parallel private medical sector — including diagnostic chains and general-practice networks operating without public subsidy — has developed at visible scale in Hungary, and Hungarian households already bear roughly 27% of total health expenditure as out-of-pocket payment, among the highest shares in the OECD, with voluntary insurance adding a further few points.[^4] Hungarians who can pay already vote with their own money for faster access and longer consultations than the state network delivers. The reform direction the framework recommends is to move from a single state operator toward funding that follows the patient — public money, plural providers including church-maintained and private hospitals, with the state purchasing care rather than running every hospital. Church-maintained hospitals already receive state support in this chapter (see the health programme block below), so the plural-provider model is, again, already partly built into the same table.

Rationale

Public funding of compulsory schooling is not the question here, and the classification is not a phase-out of school funding. The question the line raises is narrower and specific to its mechanism: the Klebelsberg Központ is a *single national employer* of the teaching workforce of state-maintained schools. Roughly 972 milliárd Ft of teacher payroll, plus 128 milliárd Ft of employer contributions, is set, allocated and administered from one central point. This is the pattern where the information that a decentralised system would generate is never produced. A national single-employer cannot read which schools face teacher shortages most acutely, which subjects command scarcity premia in which regions, or what staffing mix a particular school's pupils need — because the signals that would carry that information, school-level hiring decisions competing for teachers at school-level terms, are replaced by a uniform national grid. Hungary has reported persistent teacher-supply pressures in certain regions and subjects alongside a centrally-fixed pay scale that cannot adjust to clear local shortages — a pattern consistent with the information suppression a national single-employer produces.[^5] The headteacher in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg knows things about the staffing of that school that no national directorate can know, and the single-employer model has no channel through which that knowledge can act.[^6] The reform is not to defund schooling. It is to move from a national single-employer to school-level or maintainer-level employment, with public per-pupil funding following the pupil. Hungary already runs this model alongside the Klebelsberg system: church-maintained schools — Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Jewish — hold governance, hiring and ethos at the denominational level while receiving state per-pupil grants, with church schools educating roughly a sixth of primary pupils and a quarter or more of secondary students.[^1] Same country, same national curriculum, decentralised employment — already operating. Sweden's friskolor system has run a universal per-pupil voucher usable at any approved school for over thirty years; independent schools enrol roughly 15% of compulsory-school pupils.[^2] The Netherlands has funded non-state schools at equal per-pupil rates under Article 23 for over a century, with roughly two-thirds of pupils in publicly-funded non-state schools.[^3] The single-employer model is a choice, not a necessity, and the alternatives are not theoretical. The Köznevelési program-line block below — which routes the per-pupil grant to non-state schools — is the funding channel a decentralised model would expand. The two halves of state education funding in this chapter are, in effect, the old model and the alternative running side by side.

Rationale

This is the single largest line in the chapter. It is public funding following pupils to church- and foundation-maintained schools that deliver the national curriculum under decentralised governance. Within the analytical frame this is the *better* delivery mechanism, not the one to cut: it is public money funding schooling without the state operating the school. Keep, and on the logic of the Klebelsberg section, grow its share as the single-employer model is unwound.

Rationale

Policing — the protection of persons and property against force and fraud, the investigation of crime, the enforcement of contracts and judgments at the point where coercion is unavoidable — is a rights-protection function in the precise classical-liberal sense. It is the part of the state that exists so that the rest of voluntary society can exist. Protection of persons and property against force and fraud is the precondition of voluntary society — the function that makes all other civil exchange possible. The classification is Keep on principle, not as a residual.

Rationale

This is the social-care analogue of the non-state school grant: public funding following the service-user to church and charitable social-care operators. On the framework's logic this is the *preferred* delivery channel — public money, plural non-state providers — and it is retained, with the same case for growing its share that applies to the non-state school grant.

Rationale

Child protection — the state's response to abuse, neglect and the absence of a functioning family — is a protective response to irreversible involuntary harm against identifiable individuals (children) who cannot protect themselves and cannot contract for an alternative. This is among the clearest retained functions in the chapter, and the classification is Keep. The state-operation question that attaches to schools and hospitals attaches here too: this line directly operates child-protection institutions and residential social-care facilities and directly employs roughly 137 milliárd Ft of payroll. Hungary again funds the alternative on a parallel line — the Szociális célú nem állami humánszolgáltatások támogatása (385,756.1 millió Ft, below) routes public funding to church and charitable social-care providers doing the same work. Over the medium term the same migration applies: public funding for child protection and social care is retained; the question of whether the state must directly operate every facility, or can purchase care from plural providers including the church and charitable operators already in the system, is open. The Nemzeti Szociálpolitikai Intézet is a small methodological and training institute for the social sector; it is retained as part of the standards layer of a publicly-funded social-care function.

Rationale

The custodial enforcement of criminal sentences is the downstream half of the rights-protection function the courts begin. A judgment that cannot be enforced is not a judgment. The prison estate is part of the rule-of-law infrastructure the classical-liberal frame finances without hesitation.

Rationale

Professional fire and rescue, flood defence, and emergency response to natural disaster are a protective response to irreversible involuntary harm: the harm is sudden, large, and falls on people who did not consent to it and cannot contract around it in the moment it arrives. The function is retained. Hungary's exposure to Danube and Tisza flooding makes the flood-defence component concretely load-bearing.

Rationale

Emergency pre-hospital care — the response to acute, sudden, life-threatening harm — is a protective response to irreversible involuntary harm. The patient cannot contract for an ambulance in the moment of a cardiac arrest or a road accident; the harm is sudden and the alternative is death or permanent injury. This is the part of healthcare that sits most squarely in the retained category. Keep.

Rationale

This line subsidises the employment of workers whose capacity to work is medically reduced. The protected group is identifiable individuals facing an involuntary disadvantage — reduced working capacity that genuinely constrains their access to ordinary labour markets. Supporting their attachment to work, rather than to a passive transfer, is consistent with the framework: it funds participation rather than withdrawal. The line is retained. The design question — whether the subsidy is best paid to employers, to sheltered workshops, or as a portable entitlement following the worker — is a mechanism-improvement question within a retained function, and the portable-entitlement form would carry better information properties; but that is refinement, not reclassification.

Rationale

This is the largest single discretionary line in the health block by a wide margin — 47,200.0 millió Ft routed to a named foundation. When a budget line of this scale takes the form "for the purposes of [named foundation]", the analytical question is what the line buys and why it is structured as a transfer to a foundation rather than as funding of an identified service through the regular health-purchasing channel. A grant to a named foundation places a large block of public money one remove from the budget scrutiny that line-item health funding receives, and the foundation acquires a professional dependence on the line that becomes a standing lobby for its continuation. To the extent the foundation funds genuine curative-care activity, that activity belongs in the retained healthcare envelope, funded through the patient-following channel where it is visible and comparable. To the extent it does not, it is a subjective allocation by political officeholders.

Rationale

This body carries the population-level public-health functions: communicable-disease surveillance and outbreak response, and pharmaceutical and medical-device authorisation and safety oversight. Infectious-disease emergency response is named in the analytical frame as a protective response to irreversible involuntary harm — a contagion is the textbook case of harm that falls on people who did not consent and cannot individually contract around it. Pharmaceutical safety authorisation protects against irreversible harm from unsafe medicines. Both functions are retained. The unusually large Dologi kiadások line (27,743.9 millió Ft, well above payroll) merits procurement scrutiny, but that is an operating-efficiency question within a retained function.

Rationale

The Országos Kórházi Főigazgatóság is the central directorate that coordinates the state hospital network. Its rationale is bound to the single-operator delivery model: it is the head office of a centrally-operated hospital system. As the curative-care delivery model migrates toward plural providers and patient-following funding (the recommendation on the Gyógyító-megelőző line above), the coordinating-directorate function shrinks with the estate it coordinates. A Nominal Freeze is the honest interim classification: holding the allocation at its current nominal level lets ordinary inflation erode the real envelope by roughly a fifth to a quarter over a decade — about 8,200–9,800 millió Ft of real-terms reduction — while the larger delivery-model reform determines the directorate's eventual size. Freezing rather than cutting reflects that the body's correct endpoint depends on a structural reform not yet legislated; it should not expand in the meantime.

Rationale

This funds the sectoral pay supplement for staff in publicly-funded social-care provision; it travels with the retained social-care function as part of its payroll cost. The mechanism objection — a centrally-set sectoral pay supplement carries the same single-grid information problem as the Klebelsberg pay scale — is real, but it argues for the same decentralisation reform, not for cutting the line.

Rationale

Protection against organised violence directed at the population is a protective response to irreversible involuntary harm — the same category as defence against external aggression. The function is retained.

Rationale

Hungarian schooling requires pupils to take either ethics or denominational religious instruction; this line funds the choice. It travels with the per-pupil model and is retained on the same logic.

Rationale

The blood supply is an input to emergency and surgical care without which the retained ambulance and hospital functions cannot operate. Hungary, like most European systems, runs blood collection on a non-remunerated voluntary-donation basis with a state service managing collection, testing and distribution; the safety-testing function is a protection against irreversible involuntary harm (transfusion-transmitted infection). The function is retained. Keep.

Rationale

The core administrative apparatus of a ministry that, on the classification below, retains its internal-security functions is itself retained — at the scale those retained functions require. The qualification matters: this chapter argues for moving the state-education, state-healthcare and state-social-care delivery functions out of direct ministry operation over a phased horizon. A ministry that ends the transition supervising policing, prisons, counter-terrorism and disaster management is a materially smaller ministry than one that also runs the school and hospital systems. The Keep is on the administrative core of the *retained* mandate; the headcount and Dologi kiadások should track the narrowed mandate down as the transitions below complete, not hold at the level a four-domain ministry needed.

Rationale

A pupil-level in-kind component of publicly-funded compulsory schooling. Retained as part of the education function; the delivery (state textbook monopoly versus competitive supply) is an operating-efficiency question, not a classification question.

Rationale

This funds border-management and reception capacity connected to migration pressure. Border control is a retained state function; the *scale* of this contingency line, however, is set by an external factor — the level of migration pressure in the budget year — that the budget table cannot forecast. A Nominal Freeze holds the line at its current nominal level rather than indexing it upward, treating it as a bounded contingency whose real value should not automatically grow; if pressure falls the line should fall with it, and a freeze is the conservative interim treatment pending that demand-linked review.

Rationale

The Oktatási Hivatal administers the national examination system (the érettségi), school registration, and curriculum-standards oversight. An external examination and qualification-certification authority is the quality-assurance layer that makes a decentralised, per-pupil-funded school system legible: it is precisely the body that lets public funding follow the pupil to any approved school while holding all schools to a common standard. Sweden's Skolinspektionen and the Netherlands' Inspectie van het Onderwijs play the same role in the comparator systems.[^7] The function is retained — and becomes *more* important, not less, under the Klebelsberg decentralisation, because common examination and inspection are what substitute for central operation.

Rationale

Performance-linked pay for the uniformed personnel of the retained internal-security services. It travels with the police, prison and disaster-management functions as part of their personnel cost. Keep.

Rationale

Determining who may enter and remain on the territory, and enforcing those determinations, is a function of the state's control of its borders — a recognised rights-protection and constitutional function. The classification is Keep. Whether the *substance* of Hungarian immigration policy is well-designed is a policy question outside the analytical scope of a budget-line classification; the administrative function of adjudication and enforcement is retained regardless of how the policy parameters are set.

Rationale

The NVSZ is the internal anti-corruption and integrity body for the law-enforcement and public services. An honest objection from the public-choice tradition is that an internal-affairs body is itself exposed to capture and can be turned to police loyalty rather than integrity. That is a real risk and an argument for *external* oversight of the body, not for abolishing the integrity function. Within the rule-of-law frame, a mechanism for detecting corruption inside the coercive apparatus is retained.

Rationale

Capital development and contingency support within the retained healthcare function.

Rationale

Special-needs provision is part of the publicly-funded education function.

Rationale

This covers the residual capital-column allocations on the chapter's institutions that are not separately itemised elsewhere in the analytical breakdown — roughly 0.17% of the chapter total. The classification reflects that the underlying institutions whose capital allocations this line aggregates are predominantly in the Keep category.

Rationale

IT operating infrastructure for the ministry's retained functions — policing, prison, disaster-management and administrative systems. Retained at the scale the retained mandate requires; an operating-efficiency review subject like any large IT line.

Rationale

This line operates the EU Internal Security Fund and related programmes for the 2021-2027 cycle; it is matched by 13,140.0 millió Ft of EU-transfer revenue, so a substantial part of the expenditure is EU-funded pass-through under a multi-year framework agreement. It is bounded — the 2021-2027 designation makes it a closing programme cycle — and contractually committed. Keep on contractual and closing-programme grounds.

Rationale

Supported employment for people with disabilities whose access to ordinary labour markets is genuinely constrained; a protective support for an identifiable group facing involuntary disadvantage. Retained.

Rationale

This funds municipal and volunteer fire brigades, which extend fire-and-rescue coverage — a protective response to irreversible involuntary harm — into areas the professional service does not reach directly. It is a normative (formula-based, not discretionary) transfer supporting a retained protective function. Keep.

Rationale

Public funding following the patient to church-maintained hospitals; the plural-provider healthcare model already operating. Retained, and consistent with the recommendation on the Gyógyító-megelőző line.

Rationale

Supplementary after-school education for disadvantaged children; funds children's access to learning support. Retained on the rights-access logic; the delivery question (which providers, with what oversight) is a refinement, not a reclassification.

Rationale

This directorate supports social-inclusion and opportunity-creation programmes within the retained social function of the ministry.

Rationale

This line directs public money to *specified* charitable organisations for housing and social-service activity. The objection is not to charitable social work — charity is voluntary society at its best — but to the mechanism: a budget line that funds *certain* named or designated charitable organisations is a subjective allocation by political officeholders deciding which charities receive taxpayer money. A charity funded by the state is no longer purely a voluntary association; it acquires a professional dependence on the line and a structural interest in its preservation. Where the underlying social need is real, it is funded through the per-capita non-state social-services grant above, which is need-linked and not organisation-designated.

Rationale

A scholarship programme supporting disadvantaged pupils through education. It funds identifiable individuals' access to schooling and opportunity — the same rights-access logic that retains the disability-access lines. Keep.

Rationale

This line funds tasks contracted out to state-linked commercial companies. The structural problem is the soft budget constraint: a commercial company funded by a recurring budget-line transfer rather than by revenue it earns in competitive supply faces no market test of whether the task is performed at a competitive cost, or whether it should be performed at all. The task itself, if genuinely needed, should be procured through open competitive tender where the price is disciplined by rival bids; the company, if viable, should win that tender on its merits.

Rationale

Contractual funding of education delivery by non-state maintainers; the per-pupil-grant model in contractual form.

Rationale

Contractual funding of retained social-care delivery.

Rationale

Early-childhood support for children in disadvantaged families; an identifiable-child, early-intervention function adjacent to child protection. Keep.

Rationale

A drug-policy programme. The programme-mix knowledge problem applies acutely here: which drug-policy interventions reduce harm is one of the most empirically contested questions in public policy, and a central programme budget cannot resolve it by allocation. The line is not a clear retained protective function and not a concentrated rent; a Nominal Freeze holds it flat, eroding roughly 440 millió Ft of real value over a decade, pending an evidence review of which components demonstrably work.

Rationale

Operating support for the local tier of the constitutional minority self-government system; retained on the same constitutional-precondition logic as the national-level line above.

Rationale

Capital development within the retained healthcare function; staff accommodation that supports the retained hospital and ambulance workforce.

Rationale

This is a discretionary grant to disability *advocacy* and interest-representation organisations — distinct from the service-delivery and individual-support lines above, which are retained. Advocacy and interest representation is the activity members of an association can and do fund themselves; a state-funded advocacy body is in the structurally awkward position of being financed by the same state it exists to lobby.

Rationale

The Polgárőrség is a voluntary citizen civil-guard movement. The voluntary, self-organising character of citizen guarding is genuine voluntary society; the objection is to financing it from general taxation, which converts a voluntary association into a state-funded body and gives its national federation a professional dependence on the budget line.

Rationale

A per-pupil top-up for small classes; part of the same retained instruction function.

Rationale

The "szakmai szervezetek" (professional organisations) component is a discretionary grant to health-sector professional bodies — the same mechanism as the Nemzeti Pedagógus Kar line: professional associations that members could fund through dues. The policy-tasks component is small and bound to the ministry's retained health-policy function. Treated as a single line, the discretionary-grant character predominates; phased out over three years (about 537 millió Ft per year) to let the professional bodies migrate to dues funding.

Rationale

The Nemzeti Szociálpolitikai Intézet is a small methodological and training institute for the social sector; it is retained as part of the standards layer of a publicly-funded social-care function.

Rationale

Sign-language interpretation is the access precondition without which deaf citizens cannot exercise rights they formally hold — access to courts, healthcare, public administration. Retained as part of the rights-access function.

Rationale

Co-financing of contracted EU and international projects; bounded by contractual project commitments. Keep on contractual grounds; the underlying projects' merits are a separate question outside the budget-line classification.

Rationale

Professional programme support within the retained disability-services function.

Rationale

A general inclusion-policy line; programme-mix knowledge problem applies. Held flat pending evidence review.

Rationale

Funds housing for young people leaving state care — a transition-to-independence support for a protected child-protection cohort. Retained.

Rationale

This line funds the ministry's litigation costs — judgments, settlements and legal costs arising from cases to which the ministry is party. It is a non-discretionary obligation: the state must honour judgments against it, and meeting court judgments is itself a rule-of-law function. The line cannot be cut without abrogating obligations. Keep.

Rationale

This subsidises pharmacies with low dispensing volume — typically rural pharmacies. The line concentrates benefit on a defined group of pharmacy owners while spreading the cost across all taxpayers, and it props up an outlet network at a scale the underlying demand does not support. A genuine rural-access concern is better met by removing the regulatory restrictions on pharmacy ownership, location and dispensing that limit how rural medicine supply can be organised — the subsidy treats a symptom of an over-regulated market.

Rationale

Standards and methodology work within the retained social-care function.

Rationale

Strategy-implementation funding; like the Health Promotion Offices, it faces the programme-mix knowledge problem. Held flat pending evidence review.

Rationale

Health-promotion offices run preventive-health programmes. Prevention has a genuine claim, but the knowledge problem applies to programme-mix decisions — which prevention activity, at what intensity, for which population, is precisely the kind of contested allocation a central programme budget cannot optimise. The line is neither a clear retained protective function nor a clear concentrated rent; a Nominal Freeze holds it flat, letting roughly 210 millió Ft of real value erode over a decade, pending an evidence review of which preventive activities demonstrably work.

Rationale

Crime prevention has a genuine claim adjacent to the retained policing function, but the programme-mix knowledge problem applies — which prevention activity works, at what intensity, is a contested allocation a central strategy budget cannot optimise. Held flat pending an evidence review of which crime-prevention activities demonstrably reduce offending.

Rationale

The same mechanism and the same reasoning as the line above: a discretionary grant to charitable organisations as organisations, rather than need-linked funding of the service.

Rationale

A general opportunity-programme line whose programme mix faces the knowledge problem — it is less individual-linked than the scholarship lines and less organisation-linked than the federation grants. Held flat pending an evidence review of which components work.

Rationale

Same retained education-funding logic.

Rationale

Direct support to identified disabled individuals for whom an adapted vehicle is a precondition of participation; a protective transfer to an identifiable group facing involuntary disadvantage. Retained.

Rationale

A higher-education college network supporting disadvantaged Roma students; funds identifiable individuals' access to higher education. Keep.

Rationale

Methodological and programme support within the retained child-protection function.

Rationale

Emergency provision against the irreversible harm of exposure — winter shelter capacity is, at the margin, a protection against death from cold. Retained.

Rationale

Implementation funding for the retained counter-terrorism function. Keep.

Rationale

The same soft-budget-constraint mechanism as the Gazdasági társaságok line above: a recurring transfer to a state-linked company rather than competitive procurement of a specified task.

Rationale

Hungary's national-minority self-government system is part of the constitutional architecture for minority representation; the operating support for the minority self-government's core function is retained as constitutional-precondition funding, on the same logic that retains the legislature itself. The "media támogatás" component warrants the standing caution that minority-media funding can expose editorial content to whichever bloc controls the funding — but the core self-government operating function is retained.

Rationale

This honours an accrued occupational entitlement of uniformed officers injured or made unfit in service — a contractual and reliance-based commitment to identifiable individuals. Within the framework, accrued individual entitlements of good-faith reliers are protected. Keep.

Rationale

Funds Hungarian-language education for the Hungarian minority in neighbouring states; a longstanding constitutional commitment to the cross-border Hungarian community. Retained.

Rationale

A discretionary operating grant to health-sector civil organisations — concentrated benefit on organised associations, diffuse cost, political allocation. Small (full 284.1 millió Ft saved in year one) but the mechanism is clear. Civil organisations that members value are funded by members.

Rationale

This line funds the state's exercise of pre-emption rights over pharmacy ownership shares — the state buying into pharmacy ownership. State acquisition of equity in retail pharmacies is the opposite of the deregulation the low-turnover-pharmacy line above calls for: it deepens state involvement in a market that an Austrian reading would open to competitive ownership.

Rationale

Operating support for institutions under the minority self-government; retained with the self-government function. Small line.

Rationale

The Nemzeti Pedagógus Kar is a statutory professional body for teachers. The classical-liberal objection is structural: a professional body funded from general taxation rather than from members' dues has its existence guaranteed independent of whether teachers value it. A professional association that teachers want would be funded by teachers; one that must be funded by the taxpayer is, by that fact, one whose demand has not been demonstrated. The 150.0 millió Ft is a small line, but the mechanism is the point — abolish the state subsidy and let the body fund itself from dues if its members want it.

Rationale

This is a discretionary grant to education-sector associations and advocacy bodies, allocated by political officeholders. It is not per-pupil schooling funding; it is a transfer to organised civil-society organisations whose members could fund their own association. The amount is small — abolition saves the full 63.3 millió Ft in year one — and the principle scales regardless of size: a discretionary grant to organised associations is concentrated benefit on an organised constituency funded diffusely from general taxation.

Rationale

A small co-financing line for EU education programmes, bounded and contractual. Keep on de-minimis and contractual grounds.

Rationale

A small reliance-based support for the orphaned children of officers who died in service; an accrued occupational commitment. Keep.

Rationale

A small scholarship line; funds individuals' education access. Keep.