From the 2026 budget audit
228 milliárd Ft compensates schools and hospitals for energy costs.
Utility-cost compensation for public institutions — 228 milliárd Ft — held at current levels pending reform of the energy-pricing architecture that generates the exposure.
Roughly 57,000 Ft per taxpayer per year — 228 milliárd Ft compensating schools, hospitals, and similar bodies for energy costs above what their operating budgets assumed.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: public schools and hospitals operating at expected service levels, insulated from energy-cost spikes. The unseen: every taxpayer funding an energy compensation that treats the price signal as an error to correct rather than information to act on.
Objection
"Schools and hospitals cannot be left to close because energy prices rose — this is basic institutional maintenance, not discretionary spending."
Answer
Keeping public services running is a legitimate function. The mechanism question is whether compensating institutions indefinitely for energy costs is the right design, or whether the energy-pricing architecture that generates the exposure should be reformed at its source. Hold at current nominal levels while the energy chapter addresses that reform.
Share if you think the answer to high energy costs in public services is cheaper energy, not permanent compensation from tax.
The analyst's verdict
Utility-cost compensation for public-task institutions
Rationale
The Közfeladatok rezsikompenzációja (utility-cost compensation for public institutions, 228,229.9 millió Ft) compensates schools, hospitals and similar bodies for energy costs; it is a within-state transfer that belongs analytically with the institutions it funds, and is held at Nominal Freeze pending the energy-cost normalisation those chapters address.
Transition mechanism
Nominal Freeze pending the energy-cost normalisation addressed in the chapters covering the institutions this line funds (schools, hospitals and similar public bodies). No indexation to inflation.
Affected groups
Schools, hospitals, and similar public-task institutions that receive energy-cost compensation; their staff and service users, whose institutional operations depend on the line being maintained.
Free Society Institute
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