From the 2026 budget audit
Opportunity programmes: who evaluates whether they create opportunity?
798 million forints for general opportunity-creation programmes whose content and effectiveness are not individually traceable in the budget table.
About 200 Ft per taxpayer per year — 798 million Ft — for programmes whose components and outcomes are not documented in a form that permits evidence review.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: a programme budget with an aspirational name. The unseen: the individuals who might benefit from the more targeted scholarship and educational access programmes — which are retained and kept — and who gain nothing additional from an undifferentiated programme line.
Objection
"Opportunity programmes help the most disadvantaged — cutting them widens inequality."
Answer
The individual-linked programmes — Útravaló scholarships, the Tanoda after-school programme, Sure Start children's houses — are all retained. The freeze applies to this general programme line, which is less individual-linked than those retained programmes and more susceptible to the programme-mix problem. Holding it flat pending an evidence review of which components work is not a cut; the real-terms erosion is modest.
Share if you think opportunity spending should be traceable to specific outcomes.
The analyst's verdict
Support for opportunity-creation programmes
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.
Transition mechanism
Hold the nominal allocation flat pending an evidence review of which opportunity-creation programme components demonstrably work.
Affected groups
Participants in opportunity-creation programmes; no immediate displacement.
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