Hungarian Competition Authority

Rationale

This is the payroll of the authority's investigators, case-handlers, the Versenytanács (Competition Council) members, and supporting staff. Antitrust enforcement is investigation-intensive and legally exacting: a cartel case turns on documentary evidence, economic analysis of market structure, and a sanction that will be litigated up to the Kúria (Supreme Court). The function being financed is the detection and removal of private arrangements that suppress competition — buyers paying cartel-inflated prices did not consent to that transfer, and have no individual remedy against it. Enforcement against involuntary extraction of this kind is a rights-protection function in the strict sense the frame uses: it is not the state choosing what markets should look like, it is the state enforcing the precondition that exchange be voluntary on both sides. The line is a Keep. Keep does not preclude an operating-efficiency review of headcount against caseload — only phase-out.

Rationale

Operating costs — premises, IT systems, the economic and legal external expertise antitrust cases routinely require, case-related translation, and the litigation costs of defending GVH decisions in court. At 1,291.6 millió Ft this is a substantial 29.2% of the operating budget, a high dologi-to-personnel ratio relative to a typical administrative chapter. That is consistent with the nature of the work: competition cases buy in forensic accounting, market-definition economics, and IT-forensic capacity rather than carrying all of it as permanent payroll. The line funds a Keep function and is itself a Keep. An efficiency note rather than a reclassification: a dologi line of this weight should be transparent about the procurement of external expert services — the standard public-choice concern is that a recurring panel of external economic consultants becomes an organised constituency with a stake in the line independent of caseload. That is a procurement-discipline question, not a phase-out question.

Rationale

The employer-side payroll levy on the personnel line above. It is mechanically tied to a Keep line and is itself a Keep. One observation worth surfacing even on a routine line: the ratio here — 363.6 millió Ft of employer contribution on 2,774.6 millió Ft of gross pay, roughly 13.1% — is the visible payroll wedge, the SzocHo employer levy. It is the smallest of the layers a Hungarian worker's full employer cost passes through before consumption. The state takes the 13% SzocHo before the gross wage is even named; then SZJA at 15% and the employee TB-járulék at 18.5% are withheld from the gross; then ÁFA at 27% applies to most of what the remaining take-home buys. For a typical working household the cumulative effective state-take from full employer compensation runs in the low-to-mid fifties percent range (approximated from statutory rates: the 13% SzocHo reduces the net wage base, then 15% SZJA and 18.5% TB-járulék are withheld, and 27% ÁFA applies to most of what the remaining take-home purchases — the precise figure varies with household consumption mix) — not the 13% this line makes visible. The point is not specific to the GVH; it is that every personnel line in the budget, this one included, books only the first and smallest layer of a wedge the worker carries in full.

Rationale

This line funds the OECD–Hungary Regional Centre for Competition in Budapest (OECD ROK — Regionális Oktatási Központ), a training centre the GVH co-operates with the OECD, delivering competition-policy capacity-building seminars for officials from non-OECD economies, principally in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. It is worth being precise about what the line is. The GVH's own enforcement function — investigating cartels affecting Hungarian buyers — is the rights-protection core that makes the rest of the chapter a Keep. This line is something different: it finances the training of foreign officials in competition methodology. The beneficiary is not the Hungarian consumer protected from a cartel; it is the diplomatic and institutional standing of hosting an OECD-branded regional centre, plus the foreign officials trained. Applying the three questions: the function could be financed otherwise — the OECD itself, the participating countries' own competition authorities, or EU technical-assistance instruments (TAIEX, the European Competition Network's own capacity-building) all fund competition-policy training, so a Hungarian general-tax line is one option among several rather than a necessity. On calculation: there is no market signal telling the budget that 206.3 millió Ft is the right level of foreign-official training to finance, as opposed to half that or twice that — the figure is an administrative judgement. On public-choice exposure: the line concentrates a clear institutional benefit (OECD branding, the GVH's international profile) while the cost is spread across Hungarian taxpayers who are not the trained parties. None of this makes the centre harmful — competition-policy diffusion across the region is plausibly a modest good — but it is not a rights-protection function for the Hungarian taxpayer who funds it, and "convenient for the authority's standing" is not the same test as "necessary." A Phase-Out is the honest classification. The 12.1 millió Ft of associated revenue (participant fees or OECD co-funding) is the seed of the alternative: the centre is partly fee-supported already. The transition is to move it to full cost-recovery — participating countries, the OECD, and EU technical-assistance budgets covering the seminar costs — over a short horizon, after which no Hungarian general-tax subsidy is needed.

Rationale

The chapter's only capital line — equipment, IT, and the digital-forensic and case-management infrastructure a modern competition authority needs as cartels and consumer-protection breaches move into online and platform markets. At 95.0 millió Ft it is modest and clearly tied to the Keep enforcement function. It is a Keep. Capital investment of this size in an enforcement body is the kind of spending the frame treats as ordinary maintenance of a rights-protection institution's working capacity.

Rationale

An unallocated chapter reserve. A reserve held inside a fejezet is not a programme; it is uncommitted spending capacity carried at the chapter level outside the scrutiny that a named line receives. The discipline that applies to every chapter applies here: spending authority should attach to an identified function, be appropriated against that function, and be visible. A standing 45.8 millió Ft pool that the chapter manager can direct without the line-item justification the rest of the chapter carries is exactly the kind of low-visibility discretion the frame treats as a default cut. If a genuine in-year need arises, the proper route is the central budget reserve (Chapter on általános tartalék), which carries parliamentary-level scrutiny, not a chapter-level cushion. The amount is small; the principle scales regardless of size. Cut in the single budget cycle.