From the 2026 budget audit
8 billion forints labelled only 'other' — what is it for?
A budget line whose purpose the budget document does not name cannot be shown to fund any necessary function — and 8 billion Ft is too large to leave unspecified.
Roughly 1,900 Ft per taxpayer per year — 8 billion Ft of asset-management spending with no stated purpose in the budget text.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: a line item that flows somewhere inside state asset management. The unseen: the specific function it funds — which the budget does not state, and which no citizen can therefore evaluate or contest.
Objection
"There must be legitimate operating costs inside that line — 'other' just means miscellaneous, not wasteful."
Answer
Legitimate costs survive itemisation. If the genuine residual transaction costs inside this aggregate are real, naming them moves them to specific lines that can each be evaluated on their own merits. The 3-year phase-out is not a demand to cut before itemising; it is a demand that unspecified spending justify itself by being named.
Share if you think 8 billion forints of spending should at least have a name.
The analyst's verdict
Other asset-management expenditures
Rationale
An undifferentiated "other" asset-management line of 8,000.0 millió Ft. A budget category labelled only "egyéb" (other) is, by construction, spending the budget document does not specify — and unspecified discretionary allocation inside a state asset-management chapter is exactly where the analytical frame presses hardest. Without a stated purpose, the line cannot be shown to fund a rights-protection function, a constitutional precondition, or a response to irreversible harm. The burden of demonstrating necessity sits with the line, and a residual catch-all cannot discharge it. Some portion is genuine residual transaction cost attached to portfolio operations; that portion would survive itemisation and reallocation to the specific lines it belongs to. The classification is Phase-Out rather than Immediate Cut to allow one budget cycle for the genuine residual operating costs hidden inside the aggregate to be identified and migrated to named lines.
Transition mechanism
A 3-year linear phase-out. During the transition, the Treasury itemises the line; demonstrably necessary transaction costs are moved to specific named lines (which then carry their own classification), and the unspecified remainder reaches zero. Year 1 saves 2,666.7 millió Ft.
Affected groups
None identifiable, which is itself the point — an unspecified line protects no nameable party. Genuine operating costs hidden inside it are preserved by reallocation, not by the aggregate.
Free Society Institute
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