From the 2026 budget audit
Should the state fund the groups that lobby the state?
1.73 billion forints to disability advocacy and interest-representation organisations — bodies funded by the same state they are meant to hold accountable.
About 433 Ft per taxpayer per year — 1.73 billion Ft total — to organisations that exist to lobby the state, funded by the state they lobby.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: advocacy organisations with a guaranteed state income and a professional interest in its continuation. The unseen: disabled individuals whose direct services and support are fully retained — and who may not benefit from a lobbying body structurally dependent on the government.
Objection
"Disability advocacy groups give disabled people a voice — without funding they cannot function."
Answer
The direct services — developmental employment, mobility support, sign-language interpretation — are fully retained and kept. The phase-out applies to advocacy organisations as organisations. An advocacy body funded by its members speaks for its members; one funded by the state speaks in the structural shadow of that dependency. A three-year transition gives the organisations time to rebuild on voluntary membership.
Share with anyone who believes disabled people's services and their advocacy should be treated as separate questions.
The analyst's verdict
Support for disability advocacy and interest organisations
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.
Transition mechanism
The phase-out is three years, declining about 577 millió Ft per year, to give the organisations time to build a voluntary membership-and-donation base. The service-delivery and direct-individual-support disability lines in this block are explicitly retained; only the advocacy-organisation grant is phased out.
Affected groups
Disability advocacy and interest organisations that must transition to voluntary funding; people with disabilities who rely on these organisations for representation — the service-delivery lines that directly support disabled individuals are retained separately.
Free Society Institute
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