From the 2026 budget audit
3,000 million Ft, round number, vague label: the anatomy of an opaque budget pool.
A 3,000.0 million Ft chapter-managed line for 'national programmes' with no breakdown of its constituent activities — allocated by whoever administers it, to recipients who become a constituency for its continuation.
Roughly 730 Ft per taxpayer per year — 3,000 million Ft exactly, a round number under a heading that discloses nothing about what it funds.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the administrators who set and allocate the pool, and the current programme participants whose continuation depends on no competitive scrutiny of their work. The unseen: the open, peer-reviewed allocation that could direct the same funds to whichever work survives external evaluation.
Objection
"National science programmes require stable, multi-year funding — competitive calls can't replace them."
Answer
Multi-year stability and competitive allocation are not in conflict. A well-designed competitive call specifies the multi-year term of the award; the Lendület Programme in this same chapter demonstrates that. A round-number pool with a generic label is not a multi-year programme — it is a discretionary appropriation. The four-year phase-out ensures in-flight commitments run their course while genuine research content migrates to contestable calls.
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The analyst's verdict
National Programmes
Rationale
"Nemzeti Programok" is a 3,000.0 millió Ft chapter-managed programme line. The label is generic and the budget carries no breakdown of what specific national programmes the line funds — which is the recurring difficulty with chapter-managed pools: a round-number allocation under a broad heading, with the composition decided administratively rather than disclosed. Whatever the constituent programmes, they are scholarly or science-policy activities, and the framework's question is the same as for the szakmai feladatok line — can the state determine the optimal level and mix of "national programmes" in the absence of a competitive, peer-reviewed allocation, and does the round-number pool concentrate discretion in the administrators who set it. The answer points to a phase-out and migration of any genuine research content to competitive funding. The four-year horizon (one year longer than the szakmai feladatok line) reflects the larger envelope and the likelihood that some constituent programmes are multi-year commitments whose run-off needs the extra year. If primary-source review of the programme composition reveals specific multi-year commitments with longer durations, the horizon for those components should be set to the actual commitment term, cited — the four-year figure is the default pending that review, not a substitute for it.
Transition mechanism
Linear phase-out over four years. In-flight programme commitments run their contracted course; new programme starts cease; genuine research content migrates to competitive peer-reviewed funding. No state payroll is on this line.
Affected groups
Participants in the constituent national programmes (who transition to competitive funding or to university and institute support over the four-year window).
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