Part I — Situation overview

According to Telex’s report of 17 August 2026, the funding base behind the Foundation for the Research of Central and East European History and Society (KKETTK) has ceased — at the organisation which brings together the House of Terror Museum, the 20th and the 21st Century Institute, the Institute for the Research of Communism, the Habsburg Historical Institute, the Imre Kertész Institute and the József Eötvös Institute, all of them under the direction of director-general Mária Schmidt. The step came a week after a similar severing of the funding of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC). It is part of a general process: following the amendment of the Fundamental Law adopted in June 2026, the assets received from the state by the public interest asset management foundations performing public duties — in everyday speech the KEKVAs — return to the state, and the founder’s rights are exercised by the state.

The order of magnitude justifies the attention. According to 444.hu’s compilation the statement of the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) identifies at least 3,000 billion forints of public assets transferred to the foundations; this includes the outsourcing of the universities that changed model just as much as the MCC, the KKETTK or the MOL – New Europe Foundation. The legal force of the construction derived from the fact that the foundations were written into the Fundamental Law, the members of the boards of trustees were appointed without time limit, and a new member could be elected only by the existing ones — that is, the system could not be touched from outside with a simple parliamentary majority. The case of the KKETTK shows the asset structure well: the foundation started in 1999 as a public foundation with 117 million forints, and when it was converted into a KEKVA in 2021 it received 600 million forints in cash to meet the statutory minimum capital, and alongside that real estate as a free asset grant — the villas on Határőr Road and Istenhegyi Road, then in 2021 an inner-city Budapest property, and in 2025 a building on Podmaniczky Street. Non-repayable budgetary support of 2.2 billion forints went to the renovation of the two villas, and a further billion to the Podmaniczky Street building. The foundation’s 2025 public benefit report shows real estate assets of 5.7 billion forints and total assets of somewhat more than 23 billion forints.

Here lies the real policy tension of today’s news. The essence of the KEKVA construction was that it placed public assets and the flow of public money into an organisational form over which the government majority of the day loses direct accountability control, while political control is preserved through the boards of trustees. The present steps dismantle this mechanism — in MIAK’s assessment justifiably. The question, however, is not the fact of the dismantling but its method: if the severing of funding is just as individual an act, based on discretion, as the granting was, then the structure of the system remains unchanged and only the beneficiaries change. This risk is sharpened by the fact that at its session of 13 August 2026 the Constitutional Court rejected for lack of competence one of the motions attacking the amendment of the Fundamental Law concerning the KEKVAs — which was not a substantive position on constitutionality, but does mean that the legal framework for settling the assets has to be written by the legislator, and one cannot wait for guidance from the Constitutional Court.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Three authors provide the interpretative frame of the topic. Niccolò Machiavelli, the sixteenth-century Florentine political thinker, devotes a separate chapter in The Prince to why introducing a new order in place of an existing arrangement is the most difficult undertaking: the beneficiaries of the old order are determined opponents, whereas the winners of the new order are only lukewarm supporters. This proposition directly explains why dismantling readily chooses speed over procedural order. The French economist Thomas Piketty, in his work Capital in the Twenty-First Century, analyses the centuries-long time series of the structure of wealth, and deals separately with the gradual transfer of public wealth into private hands as one of the main driving forces of the growth of private wealth — this gives the asset-structure interpretation of the KEKVA construction, independently of its political judgement. In the collection The Analects, Confucius contrasts two modes of government: governing by decree and punishment, and governing by virtue and a fixed order of rites — the former can be evaded, the latter becomes internalised; this proposition is the source of MIAK’s KU5 culture funding programme point. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures which turn the individual decisions on taking back into a general procedure for settling assets, valid for everyone.

MIAK proposes that within ninety days the National Assembly should adopt a uniform statute on settling the assets, prescribing the same procedure for every asset item returning from a KEKVA. The statute should fix four elements: (a) the itemised inventory of the asset items — real estate, cash, securities, collections, intellectual property, with opening and closing values; (b) the determination of the purpose — which asset item goes to which state or municipal function, and which one may be sold; (c) the route of legal remedy — the organisation concerned should have a documented right to comment and a claim enforceable before a court against the decision affecting it; (d) the rules of the transitional period — the fate of contracts, employment relationships and scholarship relationships in progress. Legal remedy is not a formality: by the yardstick of the I5 protection of property rights programme point, the deprivation of property may take place only in the public interest as defined by statute, with compensation and independent judicial review — and this yardstick holds even if the assets originally came from the state. Without it the present settlement leaves behind years of litigation and uncertainty.

3.2 Entering every asset item taken back and every terminated funding channel on the public money dashboard (from the fourth quarter of 2026)

Taking back becomes accountable if it is visible. MIAK proposes that from the fourth quarter of 2026 every asset item and funding channel connected to a KEKVA should be placed in machine-readable form on the A1 public money dashboard: the asset value at foundation and at present, the budgetary support received broken down by year, the beneficiaries of the larger contractual payments, and the identifier and estimated value of the returning asset item. The data release should also extend to how much public money went into the renovation of the properties, and who won the public procurements announced for this — in the case of the KKETTK, according to Telex’s data, the public procurement for the 2.2 billion forint renovation support was won by a single company connectable to the earlier government circle. This is the extension of the logic of the A2 public procurement transparency and A3 asset declaration publicity programme points to the foundation sector, and at the same time the data basis of the G6 programme against rent-seeking. The data of the dashboard also make it possible to decide whether Mária Schmidt’s claim that the foundation “received no assets, only the minimum capital prescribed by law” stands up — on the basis of the public land register and budgetary data this is a question of fact, not a question of opinion.

3.3 Culture and research funding with a public system of criteria, with guaranteed protection of collections (from the first half of 2027)

With the ceasing of the KEKVAs significant channels of culture and research funding come to an end — what is needed in their place is not another discretionary system but a rule-based order of competitive applications. MIAK proposes that from the first half of 2027 the determining part of cultural and research support should be distributed on the basis of a public system of criteria, with scored assessment, by a rotating and politically mixed assessment panel, with the publication of the decisions and the scores — this is also the quantified aim of the KU5 programme point, which sets the target of pushing the discretionary proportion below 30 per cent. A separate guarantee is connected to this: the integrity of the collections, archives and bequests of the ceasing or transforming institutions should be secured independently of the fate of the institution. In the case of the KKETTK this is not an abstract question — the Imre Kertész Institute manages part of Imre Kertész’s bequest, as well as parts of the bequests of Arthur Koestler, György Petri, János Pilinszky and György Pressburger, and the complete bequest of János Sziveri. MIAK proposes that within ninety days an itemised condition survey and digitisation statement should be prepared on every collection concerned, within the framework of the KU1 digital cultural heritage programme point. And the filling of the leadership positions should be governed by the rules of the KI7 selection and rotation system: public application, professional jury, scored assessment.

The common principle of the three proposals is that none of them is about the actors. Machiavelli’s warning (see 6.4.1) is precisely that whoever introduces a new order works against the greatest resistance, and therefore speed is tempting — MIAK’s proposal, however, says that this is exactly where it is worth slowing down. A settlement of assets which takes place at the statutory level, itemised and with legal remedy, is three or four months slower, but ten to fifteen years more durable, than one which proceeds quickly by individual decisions.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Economy Assets worth several thousand billion forints return to a transparent state register; the fulfilment of EU funding conditions improves A disorderly transition may cause years of legal disputes and loss of value; the operation of the properties may temporarily be left without an owner
Culture and science A public system of criteria reduces the political exposure of funding Researchers working at the ceasing institutes and the programmes in progress may be left without a transition; the collections may be left unguarded
Public administration A uniform procedural order for taking over assets, fewer individual decisions The capacity of the state asset manager is finite; taking over several hundred asset items at once causes congestion
Rule of law The existence of a route of legal remedy also gives protection at the time of the next change of government If the dismantling takes place without legal remedy, it creates a precedent for an equally rapid deprivation in the opposite direction

The main trade-off of the package of proposals lies between speed and legal certainty. There are real arguments for rapid taking back: the longer the uncertainty lasts, the greater the chance of a loss of value in the assets or of asset items being moved, and the fulfilment of EU funding conditions is also tied to a deadline. At the same time deprivation without legal remedy repeats exactly the pattern against which the step is directed. In MIAK’s position the correct solution is not slowing down but running things in parallel: securing the assets and taking them into the register can happen immediately, while the substantive decision on their purpose is taken within a statutory framework, with legal remedy, over a few months. The proposal tips over to the risk side if the statutory framework gives such a general authorisation to the executive that the itemised decisions are after all taken at the level of decrees or resolutions — this is why MIAK asks for an itemised annex by asset item and for the publicity of the decisions.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (proposed KPIs)

Four proposed performance indicators (KPIs) are worth watching:

  • Statutory coverage: by the end of 2026 the fate of at least 90% of the returning asset items should be settled by an itemised provision at statutory level — not by individual resolution.
  • Asset publicity: by the end of the first quarter of 2027, 100% of the asset items connectable to a KEKVA should appear on the public money dashboard, with opening and closing values.
  • Protection of collections: by the end of the fourth quarter of 2026 the itemised condition survey and digitisation indicator of the collections and bequests concerned should be completed.
  • Discretionary proportion in culture funding: the proportion of cultural support distributed by individual discretion, without a public system of criteria, should fall below 30% by 2028 — this is the KU5 programme point’s own target figure.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message is that the dismantling of the KEKVA system is necessary, but its credibility comes not from its speed but from its being governed by rules. Of the decision-maker MIAK asks a single, cheap and quickly feasible step: the submission within ninety days of the itemised, statutory-level framework for settling the assets, together with a route of legal remedy. And of the public it asks that in the coming months it should ask not only from whom they were taken, but also: where they went, what they are worth, and who decided their fate.

Two MIAK foundational values are directly in play here. Transparency: a mass of assets which was originally placed in foundation form precisely in order to escape direct accountability truly returns to public hands only if its register and its value are visible itemised — state ownership is not in itself transparency. And ideology-free judgement: the procedural order which today decides on the assets of an institutional network tied to a former government will tomorrow decide on the assets of an organisation close to a present government. MIAK therefore does not ask that the taking back should be dropped, but that it should proceed according to a rule which the decision-maker would also accept against their own camp.

Part VI — Reasoning and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The left-liberal band ran two different threads, and the two together give the full picture. Telex worked up the history of how the institutional network was built: how the public foundation established in 1999 became a matryoshka-structured system of institutes, what properties and budgetary support it received, and how all this relates to the claim of the leader concerned that the foundation received no assets. The strength of the paper’s framing is that it carries out fact-checking on a concrete, publicly stated claim; its weakness is that it itself leaves open the question relating to the future — what will happen to the collections and the buildings — with reference to the fact that “not even in the government do they know this exactly”. 444.hu, by contrast, mapped the supplier structure of the system as a whole across several foundations, with a methodology built on public interest data requests. This approach gives the strongest data basis, but the part on the KKETTK continues in the paper’s paywalled section, so the itemised data on the foundation concerned cannot be read out of the publicly accessible part of the text.

The public affairs band touched the topic on this day mainly from the direction of local public money media funding: 24.hu published a compilation based on a public interest data request about the remuneration of the leaders of the Győr municipal media company. Formally this is a separate matter, structurally, however, it is the same: a channel financed from public money, without an accountability wall, with a political communications function. MIAK mentions it here because the proposed yardstick of publicity is the same in both cases.

The pro-government and conservative band did not carry the topic on this day as an independent analysis, but Magyar Nemzet published a related piece of news with legal bearing: at its session of 13 August the Constitutional Court rejected for lack of competence one of the motions attacking the amendment of the Fundamental Law concerning the KEKVAs. The paper separately highlighted that this did not amount to a substantive position on the constitutionality of the provision. This clarification is professionally correct and important: the question of the possibilities of legal remedy for those concerned nonetheless remains open, and it is precisely for this reason that MIAK proposes a legal remedy enforceable before a court, built into the statutory-level settlement. In the conservative band the farewell interview with the head of the institutional network also appeared — by MIAK’s yardstick of ideology-free judgement, the claims formulated in it deserve the same fact-checking as any other public claim, no more and no less.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
Order of magnitude of the public assets transferred to the KEKVAs at least HUF 3,000 billion statement of the State Audit Office (444.hu)
Amendment of the Fundamental Law on returning the KEKVA assets to the state June 2026 444.hu
Founding of the KKETTK and its initial assets 1999, HUF 117 million Telex
Cash grant on conversion into a KEKVA HUF 600 million (statutory minimum capital) Telex
Renovation support for the two villas HUF 2.2 billion non-repayable Telex
Renovation of the Podmaniczky Street building HUF 1 billion Telex
Real estate assets of the KKETTK (2025 report) HUF 5.7 billion Telex
Total assets of the KKETTK (2025 report) somewhat more than HUF 23 billion Telex
Severing of the MCC’s funding around 10 August 2026, a week before the KKETTK Telex, HVG
Constitutional Court decision concerning the KEKVAs 13 August 2026, rejection for lack of competence Magyar Nemzet

Behind the figures stands a structural fact, and this is more important than any individual item: the asset grant and the operational funding ran on two separate channels. One is the free asset grant — properties and cash — the other is the continuous budgetary support, out of which, for example, the renovations took place. The present taking back concerns primarily the first channel, whereas today’s news is about the closing of the second channel. This distinction matters because the legal nature of the two steps differs: the return of the assets rests on provisions of the Fundamental Law and of statute, whereas the termination of funding is a budgetary and maintainer’s decision. Legal remedy can be attached to the former, typically not to the latter — and it is precisely for this reason that the two have to be handled within a single, transparent framework for settling the assets.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the registration of the returning assets and the terminated funding channels is the task of the A1 public money dashboard; the subsequent review of the renovation procurements is the subject of A2; the publicity of the remuneration of trustees and leaders belongs to the A3 programme point; the institutional lesson of the construction as a whole is the A6 question of checks and balances.
  • Culture (programme points) — the new funding order should be built according to the KU5 open culture funding programme point; the condition survey and digitisation of the bequests and collections is the subject of KU1.
  • Justice (programme points) — the procedural yardstick of the deprivation of assets and the legal remedy fall within the scope of the I5 protection of property rights programme point.
  • Economy (programme points) — preventing the rent-seeking connected to state asset grants is the subject of the G6 programme.
  • Public administration and e-government (programme points) — the filling of the leadership positions of the transforming institutions should proceed according to the KI7 selection and rotation system.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince

In the sixth chapter Machiavelli examines the question of why the one who tries to establish a new arrangement so often fails. His answer is structural, not a matter of character:

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”

For him the cause of the asymmetry is twofold: the beneficiaries of the old order know exactly what they are losing, whereas the winners of the new order have not yet experienced what they will gain, and are therefore cautious. From this follows the practical lesson which MIAK applies to the present situation: the new order survives if it rests not on the personal determination of the one who introduces it but on a written rule applying to everyone. The settlement of the KEKVA assets is today in exactly this situation. If the taking back remains a series of individual decisions, then its maintenance too depends on the determination of the government of the day — and at the next turn it can be reversed by exactly the same kind of individual decisions. If, on the other hand, it takes place within a statutory framework, with itemised annexes and legal remedy, then the new order draws its strength from the rule, not from the actors. In this reading Machiavelli’s advice is not cynical but practical: whoever introduces a new order should not count on the enthusiasm of the supporters.

📖 Source: Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince

6.4.2 Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Piketty explains the growth of private wealth in the developed countries by two complementary phenomena, and one of them relates directly to the present topic:

“The privatisation of wealth in the developed countries […] privatisation, that is, the gradual transfer of public wealth into private hands, is one, and the long-run catching up of asset prices is the other. […] The share of public wealth in national wealth has fallen precipitously in recent decades.”

The essence of the analysis is not a political value judgement but a measurement criterion: the ratio of public to private wealth is an indicator which can be followed on a scale of decades, and which shows where a given institutional decision moves the structure of wealth. In this frame the KEKVA construction is a peculiar intermediate case: the assets formally did not go to private individuals but to legal persons under private law — foundations — over which, however, neither ownership nor direct accountability control prevailed. Piketty’s closing remark fits here too: everything “depends on institutions such as taxation or public wealth”. The Hungarian lesson from this is that taking back is not in itself a result: the assets truly become public assets if their register, their value and their utilisation are also public — this is why MIAK asks in proposal 3.2 for itemised data release with opening and closing values.

📖 Source: Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

6.4.3 Confucius: The Analects

The third section of the second book of the collection contrasts two modes of government, and defines the difference through its consequences:

“If the people are governed by decrees and kept in order by punishments, they will evade (the punishment) but will know no shame. If they are governed by virtue (te) and kept in order by the rites, they will know shame and will always be upright.”

“Rite” here does not refer to a religious act but to the fixed order known and followed by everyone — in today’s terms: the institutionalised procedure. The distinction therefore runs between governing by ad hoc instruction and governing by an internalised rule. This proposition is the source of MIAK’s KU5 programme point, and it illuminates precisely why dismantling the KEKVA system is not enough. The construction of recent years was “governing by decree” in the sense that support depended on an individual decision, and the actors adapted to this. If the order taking its place is also based on individual decisions, the actors will adapt in the same way — only to a different addressee. What corresponds to the “rite” in this frame is the order of competitive applications with a public system of criteria, scored, and operating with a rotating assessment panel: it works not because the decision-maker is well-intentioned but because the rule is known in advance and is the same for everyone.

📖 Source: Confucius: The Analects

6.5 International comparison

The settlement of assets after the change of system has a basis of comparison in Central Europe. The common lesson of the Czech and the Polish privatisation and restitution processes is that rapid, itemised statutory settlement — however disputed its outcome may have been — left behind less long-term legal uncertainty than a slow series of case-by-case decisions. The German asset management after reunification (the Treuhandanstalt), by contrast, gives the negative lesson: the organisation received broad discretionary powers, the publicity of its decisions was limited, and the process turned into a political conflict lasting decades — according to most assessments today it was not the fact of the sales but the opacity of the procedure that caused the greatest damage to trust.

The EU dimension is not negligible either: the incompatibility and accountability problems of the KEKVA construction were one of the reasons cited for the suspension of Hungarian cohesion and recovery funds. From this it follows that the present settlement is not only a domestic political but also a funding-condition question — and from the European Commission’s point of view the yardstick is not the fact of taking back but the institutional order that follows it: is there a rule on incompatibility, public tendering and legal remedy. The A8 cohesion accountability programme point carries this viewpoint further.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A1 — Public money dashboard
  • A2 — Public procurement transparency
  • A3 — Publicity of asset declarations
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A8 — Cohesion policy accountability

Culture

  • KU1 — Digital cultural heritage
  • KU5 — Cultural participation index and open culture funding

Justice

  • I5 — Protection of property rights

Economy

  • G6 — Programme against rent-seeking and regulatory capture

Public administration and e-government

  • KI7 — Official selection and rotation system

Proposed new programme point: A uniform statute on settling the assets returning from the public interest asset management foundations performing public duties, with an itemised annex and legal remedy — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 17 August 2026 — topic 3):

  • [Telex] Schmidt Mária egész fideszes intézethálózata alól kihúzta a szőnyeget a kormány — https://telex.hu/belfold/2026/08/17/schmidt-maria-terror-haza-xx-szazad-intezet-xxi-szazad-intezet-kekva-alapitvany
  • [444.hu] Egy értelme biztos volt a kekva-rendszernek: milliárdok csorogtak fideszes érdekeltségekbe — https://444.hu/2026/08/16/egy-ertelme-biztos-volt-a-kekva-rendszernek-milliardok-csorogtak-fideszes-erdekeltsegekbe
  • [HVG] Zuhanórepülésben az MCC – kemény lesz a NER-es foxi-maxi landolása — https://hvg.hu/360/20260815_hvg-mcc-kekva-vagyonvisszaszerzes-finanszirozas-kepzes-7-ezer-diak (the article was not publicly downloadable)
  • [HVG] Itt a lista: 41, zömében romos műemléket vett a NER a határon túl — https://hvg.hu/360/20260813_romos-muemlekek-hataron-tul-ner-vagyon-kastelyok-hotelek-szellemhazak-hvg-ebx (the article was not publicly downloadable)
  • [24.hu] Hárommilliós fizetés, jutalom, bérelt autó, lakhatási támogatás – jól tartották a győri önkormányzati média vezetőit a NER-korszakban — https://24.hu/belfold/2026/08/17/gyor-media-propaganda-fidesz-fizetesek/
  • [Magyar Nemzet] Hatáskör hiányában nem döntött érdemben az Alkotmánybíróság a KEKVA-kat érintő alaptörvény-módosításról — https://magyarnemzet.hu/belfold/2026/08/alkotmanybirosag-alaptorveny-modositas-sulyok-tamas-tisza

Knowledge base references (professional literature):

  • 📖 Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince
  • 📖 Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century
  • 📖 Confucius: The Analects

Note: the local file path of the books does not appear in the visible text of the blog — only the author and the title. The file path is an internal matter of the generation process, not the reader’s.

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A1, A2, A3, A6, A8)
  • MIAK policy area: Culture (programme points; programme point ID: KU1, KU5)
  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I5)
  • MIAK policy area: Economy (programme points; programme point ID: G6)
  • MIAK press monitor, 17 August 2026 — topic 3, score: 86/100

Supplementary public data sources (where used):

  • State Audit Office — statements concerning the public interest asset management foundations
  • MNV Zrt. — state asset register
  • Hungarian Official Gazette — legal rules and resolutions on settling assets
  • National Office for the Judiciary civil organisation register — public benefit reports
  • Transparency International — Hungarian time series of the Corruption Perceptions Index

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