From the 2026 budget audit
1.8 billion Ft in development grants to businesses and organisations outside Hungary.
Economic development subsidies to Hungarian-minority communities and firms in neighbouring countries, allocated by the foreign ministry from the general tax pool.
Roughly 440 Ft per taxpayer per year — 1,766 million Ft flowing to commercial and community organisations across the border, selected by ministerial discretion.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the business or community organisation abroad that receives a development grant. The unseen: the taxpayer inside Hungary who funds a cross-border commercial subsidy with no contractual or rights-protection basis — and no market price to confirm the grant went to its highest-value use.
Objection
"Supporting Hungarian-minority communities abroad is a national obligation — cutting this abandons diaspora Hungarians."
Answer
Cultural and community support for diaspora Hungarians is a different category from economic-development grants to commercial organisations. The former has a genuine protective rationale; the latter is a commercial subsidy whose recipients happen to be ethnically Hungarian. Grants to minority businesses outside Hungary carry the same allocation problem as grants to businesses inside: a political office decides who wins, without a market price to check the decision.
Share if you think cross-border development grants should be held to the same standard as domestic ones.
The analyst's verdict
Cross-Border Economic Development and Other Development and Research Programmes
Rationale
This line funds economic-development grants to Hungarian-minority communities and businesses in neighbouring countries. The activity is a discretionary transfer: the foreign ministry selects recipient projects and businesses abroad and funds them from the Hungarian general taxpayer. The recipients are commercial and community organisations outside Hungary; the beneficiary is concentrated and identifiable, the cost diffuse. There is no rights-protection or rule-of-law-infrastructure rationale, and a discretionary grant line creates no contractual entitlement to continuation. The line can be closed in a single cycle.
Transition mechanism
Eliminate the appropriation in 2026.
Affected groups
Cross-border community and business grant recipients.
Free Society Institute
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