From the 2026 budget audit
The running costs of a household subsidy that replaces your own decision with the ministry's.
2 milliárd Ft to administer co-financing schemes for household insulation and heating upgrades — a programme phased out to protect households already mid-commitment.
Roughly 502 Ft per taxpayer per year — 2,007 millió Ft in administrative overhead for a household grant programme winding down over 4 years.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the household that receives a co-financing grant and upgrades its insulation or boiler. The unseen: the household that would have made the same upgrade anyway and collects the grant as a pure transfer — and the neighbour whose tax funded both.
Objection
"Many families can't afford insulation without help — removing this leaves lower-income households in cold homes."
Answer
The programme does not distinguish between households that needed the subsidy to act and households that would have acted regardless. Both collect the same grant. A targeted payment to genuinely constrained households would protect the real need at a fraction of the cost. The 4-year phase-out protects households that signed co-financing arrangements; no new commitments are made from year one.
Share if you think energy upgrade subsidies should go to households that need them, not to everyone equally.
The analyst's verdict
Energy and climate policy modernisation system — Household support programmes — operating
Rationale
These are household-facing energy-modernisation subsidies — typically co-financing for insulation, heating-system replacement, or rooftop solar. The mechanism objection is the same as for the enterprise programmes: the subsidy substitutes an administrative judgement for the household's own cost-benefit decision, and a household that would have insulated anyway collects the grant as pure transfer. But the classification differs because some households will have entered multi-year co-financing arrangements — works contracted, instalments scheduled — and abrupt termination would strand a genuine reliance interest. A 4-year linear phase-out lets in-flight household commitments run off; net saving rises from 3,001.8 millió Ft in year 1 to the full 12,007.2 millió Ft in year 4.
Transition mechanism
Linear phase-out over 4 years, allowing in-flight household co-financing commitments to run off. New applicants face no reliance interest and the programme stops accepting them in year 1. Net saving rises from 3,001.8 millió Ft in year 1 to the full 12,007.2 millió Ft in year 4.
Affected groups
Households with co-financing arrangements already signed, protected through the phase-out window. New applicants face no reliance interest and the programme stops accepting them in year 1.
Free Society Institute
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