Part I — Situation overview

On 28 August 2026, in a single day, the affairs of three public-interest asset management foundations performing public tasks (KEKVA) were closed — in three radically different ways. Health minister Zsolt Hegedűs announced the winding up of the Central and Eastern European Oncology Academy Foundation; according to his reasoning the tangible results of the foundation were not proportionate to the public money spent on it, while it acquired and renovated a villa in Diana Street in the hilly district for around one billion forints. On the same day MOL and the Hungarian state agreed on the asset settlement connected with the dissolution of the MOL New Europe Foundation: some 43 million MOL shares, liquid assets of roughly 40 billion forints in market value and tangible assets of about 300 million forints in book value pass to the corporate group. The public tasks pass to the state as legal successor, and MOL undertook in a letter of intent to spend at least 10 billion forints a year on social purposes for three years. Finally, according to the government decree published in the Hungarian Official Gazette, from 31 August the National Talent Centre takes over the public tasks of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium Foundation relating to education and cultural affairs, together with the associated contracts, employment relationships and pending proceedings.

The antecedent is a long one: since 2021 the KEKVA model has placed several hundred billion forints of state assets and the maintainer’s rights over universities into private-law organisations. The wind-down started in the summer, with the appointment of settlement commissioners. According to the information of the Ministry of Education and Children’s Affairs, 168 positions were refilled in the boards of trustees and supervisory boards of the higher education KEKVAs — replacing some 98 per cent of board membership — from more than 1,200 applicants, out of 660 valid applications, following the opinions of the senates and the integrity examination of the State Audit Office (ÁSZ). At the same time the process is legally open: the Blue Planet Climate Protection Foundation has sought legal remedy against the procedure of the settlement commissioner and against the decision of the Prime Minister’s Office.

MIAK’s reading is that the problem is not the objective but the yardstick. Within a single day three kinds of outcome were produced for the same legal question: winding up, negotiated division of assets, and takeover of a public task without settling the assets. If there is no settlement yardstick published in advance and applied to everyone in the same way, then every case is a separate bargain — and precisely that ad hoc deliberation is rebuilt into the system whose elimination was the original reason for the KEKVA wind-down.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Three conceptual reference points offer themselves for evaluating the process. According to the proposition of Joseph Raz (Israeli-British legal philosopher, one of the most cited authors of the formal conception of the rule of law), the rule of law does not prohibit particular decisions but requires that particular decisions be framed by general, open and relatively stable rules — in the present Hungarian situation precisely this frame is missing, which is why the outcomes of three cases differ within a single day. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (economists, leading authors of institutional economics, awarded the Nobel memorial prize in economics in 2024) warn with the iron law of oligarchy that the dismantling of extractive institutions often ends not with the disappearance of the institution but with the replacement of its beneficiaries; this is the most important risk of the KEKVA wind-down. And the Fundamental Law provides the domestic legal basis: the purpose of the management of national assets is to serve the public interest, organisations managing public money are obliged to render account before the public, and data relating to public money are data of public interest. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. None of them stands against the objective of eliminating the KEKVA model; all three settle the question of the procedure in which it should happen.

3.1 A uniform settlement protocol published in advance (before the launching of the remaining cases)

The Government should publish by decree, before the launching of the remaining foundation cases, the uniform procedural order which applies identically to every asset management foundation concerned. The protocol should record four elements: the obligatory date of the preparation and publication of the asset inventory, the predetermined criteria of evaluation, the right of the party concerned to submit observations and the deadline for this, and the avenue of legal remedy. The emphasis is on timing: the publication of the yardstick should precede the decision, not follow it. According to Raz’s principle (see 6.4.1) a particular decision fits into the framework of the rule of law if it is made on the basis of a public and stable general rule — present practice is the reverse of this, because the reasoning is formulated in every case afterwards, individually. The protocol is the direct application of MIAK’s A6 checks and balances programme point, and it does not slow the process: procedural uncertainty takes more time today than a procedural order fixed in advance would cost.

3.2 A public, itemised asset inventory for every foundation concerned, before the decision

An independent, itemised asset inventory should be prepared for every foundation concerned, published before the decision on winding up or on the takeover of tasks, in a machine-readable format on the public money page proposed by MIAK (A1). The inventory should contain real property, shareholdings, liquid assets and the contractual obligations tied to the public task performed by the foundation. This step has two mutually independent benefits. On the one hand it grounds the evaluation: the objection that “the results were not proportionate to the public money spent” is tenable only if both the expenditure and the result can be shown in figures. In the case of the oncology foundation the earlier examination by the ÁSZ and the public datum of the roughly one billion forint headquarters purchase are such a basis; a photograph of a villa in itself is not. On the other hand it protects the state: the public inventory records the state of assets which will later have to be documented in court proceedings as well. Linked with the asset declaration data under programme point A3, the inventory is also suitable for filtering out conflicts of interest in the boards of trustees.

3.3 The public task and the resource belonging to it should move together, with a first annual performance plan

If a public task passes to a state organisation — as in the case of talent support and cultural tasks — then the receiving organisation should also receive, alongside the task, the separately stated resource belonging to it, and should publish a first annual performance plan within ninety days of entry into force. The plan has to contain at least three figures: with how many beneficiaries, with what annual envelope and with what measurable outcome indicator it works. This is not an additional administrative burden but the only way for the takeover of the public task not to become invisible: if the task dissolves into a single line of the budget of a larger state institution, its performance in the coming years will not be comparable with the earlier state of affairs. In the education area the proposal follows the measurement logic of O3 data-driven development, in the cultural area that of KU5 open culture funding, and in health research funding that of programme point E4.

The three proposals are linked by a single principle: the return of assets is successful if it is defensible viewed from the end of the process as well. Acemoglu and Robinson’s warning (see 6.4.2) is precisely about the fact that the dismantling of a structure and the takeover of a structure are for a long time indistinguishable from the outside — the difference is made visible by the quality of the procedure, by nothing else.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Public assets Thanks to the inventory and the uniform yardstick the value of the returned assets is documented and can be called to account later The time required for taking the inventory may drag out the process, while the value of the asset items changes
Education and culture The resource of the public task can be followed separately, performance can be compared year by year The capacity of the state institution taking over the task may be narrow; in the year of transition a loss of service may arise
Legal certainty The protocol published in advance and the avenue of legal remedy reduce the number and duration of lawsuits The protocol cannot be applied retroactively to cases already launched; in these it does not prevent the lawsuits
Public administration A uniform procedural order, less ad hoc deliberation, more predictable work for the apparatus Regulation at the level of a decree can be withdrawn just as easily by a subsequent government

The most important question for deliberation is the relation between speed and legal closure. Political logic argues for speed: the longer the process lasts, the more opportunity opens for moving asset items. The logic of the rule of law argues for closure: a decision taken in a defective procedure may be annulled by the court years later, and then not only do the assets fail to return, but the legal status of the intervening period also becomes uncertain. The two are not irreconcilable — the solution is a short but binding deadline: the fifteen days provided for observations does not substantially slow the process, but it removes most formal objections.

The second question for deliberation is the choice between the level of a decree and that of an act. A decree is faster, an act is more durable. In MIAK’s position it is worth publishing the procedural order in a decree because of speed, but fixing the obligation of separating the resource and of reporting on the takeover of public tasks in the next budget act — because that is the part which has to stand beyond the government cycle as well.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (proposed KPIs)

The performance indicators (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) below are suitable for judging the quality of the process in 12–24 months. These are proposed indicators, not government undertakings.

  • Inventory coverage: for what percentage of the asset management foundations concerned a public, itemised asset inventory was published before the decision on winding up or on the takeover of tasks. Proposed target: 100 per cent by mid-2027.
  • Number and subject matter of pending lawsuits: how many foundations sought legal remedy, and what percentage of these are formal-procedural objections. The share of formal objections directly measures the quality of the protocol.
  • Separation of resources: for what percentage of the public tasks taken over a separate budget line can be shown at the receiving organisation. Proposed target: comprehensive from 2028.
  • Publication of performance plans: how many receiving organisations published their first annual performance plan within ninety days, with numerical indicators.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request is concrete: before launching the remaining foundation cases the Government should publish the uniform settlement protocol, and should publish the asset inventory of the organisations concerned. Not because the elimination of the KEKVA model is objectionable — in MIAK’s position the return of an opaque asset management structure is a correct objective — but because the quality of the method decides whether it becomes a correction under the rule of law or simply a rearrangement of assets in the opposite direction. The difference is not a question of intention but of documentation.

Two MIAK foundational values move together here. Accountability, because the returned assets are public assets just as much as the assets placed outside were, and the same demand for public accounting applies to them. And freedom from ideology, because the procedural yardstick has to be applied irrespective of who created which foundation and to whom its board of trustees can be tied — a protocol which demands a detailed statement of reasons for one foundation and is satisfied with a communiqué for another is not a protocol but an instrument.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The framing of the press, spectrum by spectrum

The segments grouped the three foundation cases in conspicuously different ways, and the difference lies not in the facts but in which case they regard as the main thread of the story.

The left-liberal segment presented the cases from the point of view of the use of public money, placing them side by side. Telex published a separate article on all three events, and in the case of the MOL agreement expressly highlighted the difference compared with the other cases: here the parties wanted the same thing, the private founder and the state founder cooperated, whereas at other foundations the process ended in strong conflict and firm state action. In the case of the oncology foundation HVG placed the emphasis on the antecedent — the three weeks from the announcement of the review to the winding up — and in its article on the Blue Planet case published in full the procedural objections of the foundation.

The public affairs segment focused on the conflict. 24.hu served up the winding up of the oncology foundation together with the earlier findings of the ÁSZ — the unverified use of 1.95 billion forints of non-repayable support and the missing invoices for the design costs of the headquarters — and gave space in a separate article to the communiqué of János Áder, in which the former president argues in five points that this is political revenge.

The economic segment highlighted the technical side of the asset transaction. In the case of the MOL agreement Portfolio reported the number of shares and the asset value, and in the case of the replacement of the higher education boards of trustees emphasised the consideration that the final ministerial decision was preceded by the opinions of the senates and the integrity examination of the ÁSZ, and that conflict-of-interest matters are examined by the Integrity Authority. This is the only segment which treated procedural guarantees as news value in their own right.

The conservative segment chose the thread of legal remedy as the main story: Mandiner published a detailed account built on quotations about the Blue Planet Climate Protection Foundation turning to the court, while it did not bring the winding up of the oncology foundation and the MOL agreement into focus on that day. The picture thus emerging is instructive: the two edges of the spectrum convey the same process as two series of events which barely touch each other.

6.2 Facts and data

Foundation Outcome Asset item Legal status
Central and Eastern European Oncology Academy Foundation winding up a Buda headquarters worth around 1 billion HUF; earlier 1.95 billion HUF of non-repayable support earlier ÁSZ finding; criminal proceedings on suspicion of breach of accounting discipline
MOL New Europe Foundation negotiated division of assets 42,977,996 MOL shares, some 40 billion HUF of liquid assets, about 300 million HUF of tangible assets closed on the basis of an agreement; the public tasks pass to the state as legal successor
Mathias Corvinus Collegium Foundation takeover of public tasks the decree does not settle the asset questions comprehensively government decree, entry into force: 31 August 2026
Blue Planet Climate Protection Foundation contested winding up the repayment with interest of the assets deriving from the KEKVA status was offered by the foundation itself legal remedy against the procedure of the settlement commissioner and the decision of the Prime Minister’s Office

The figures of the renewal of the boards at the higher education asset management foundations: more than 1,200 applicants, 660 applications valid in form and substance, 168 positions filled, which amounts to a replacement of some 98 per cent of board membership. The selection was preceded by the opinions of the senates of the higher education institutions and by the integrity examination of the ÁSZ; possible conflict-of-interest matters are examined by the Integrity Authority.

One frequently overlooked consequence of the MOL agreement is that through the transaction the Hungarian state again becomes a MOL shareholder of some 5.25 per cent, and the share of the company’s own shares grows by the same amount. According to the letter of intent of the corporate group it will spend at least 10 billion forints a year for three years on talent support, the training of new generations, sustainability, children’s medicine, sport, education and the protection of cultural heritage — but this undertaking is a letter of intent, not a public task performance contract, so it does not have the same legal binding force behind it.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the publication of the asset inventory is one of the most obvious first data sets of the public money dashboard (programme point ID: A1); for filtering out conflicts of interest in the boards of trustees the machine readability of asset declaration data (programme point ID: A3) is necessary; the uniform procedural order is an application of the checks and balances programme point (programme point ID: A6).
  • Education (programme points) — the impact measurement of the talent support tasks taken over can be carried out within the framework of data-driven educational development (programme point ID: O3).
  • Culture (programme points) — channelling funding for cultural purposes into a public call-for-applications system and reducing the share of ad hoc decisions is the objective of open culture funding (programme point ID: KU5).
  • Healthcare (programme points) — the outcome indicators of oncology research funding can be fitted to the measurement framework of the prevention data programme (programme point ID: E4).

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law

Raz’s conception of the rule of law is deliberately formal: it is not about whether the content of the law is just, but about whether the law is capable of guiding conduct at all. From this he derives the proposition which fits the present situation most precisely:

“The doctrine of the rule of law does not deny that every legal system should consist of both general, open, and stable rules […] and particular laws (legal orders) […]. What the doctrine requires is the subjection of particular laws to general, open, and stable ones. It is one of the important principles of the doctrine that the making of particular laws should be guided by open and relatively stable general rules.”

Raz thus does not deny that the executive needs particular decisions — on the contrary, he regards them as an indispensable instrument. His requirement is only that the particular decision be framed by a public and relatively stable general rule, because without this the decision is unpredictable from the outside. In the KEKVA cases this frame is missing: the procedure of the settlement commissioner, the criteria of evaluation and the conditions of the agreement follow not from a rule published in advance but from deliberation arising case by case. This is how it can happen that within a single day three kinds of outcome are produced for the same legal question, and this is why the decision can be attacked on procedural grounds even when it is defensible in substance. MIAK’s proposal 3.1 would fill precisely this gap.

📖 Source: Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law — Essays on Law and Morality

6.4.2 Daron Acemoglu – James A. Robinson: Why Nations Fail

The most important warning of the volume for this topic is not the distinction between extractive and inclusive institutions but the mechanism which the authors call the iron law of oligarchy:

“The essence of the iron law of oligarchy is that new leaders are able to overthrow the rule of the old ones because they promise radical changes, which they then fail to deliver.”

The authors regard this as one of the hard-to-recognise forms of the vicious circle: it is not that the old beneficiaries stay in power, but that the new actors rebuild the old structure — only to their own advantage. The dismantling of the KEKVA model stands at precisely such a turning point. If the assets and the maintainer’s rights return to the state, but the awarding and the accounting continue to be based on ad hoc deliberation, then the structure remains unchanged and only the circle of beneficiaries is replaced. From the outside the distinction is possible in one way only: from the documentation of the procedure. This is why MIAK places the emphasis on the public inventory and on the yardstick published in advance, rather than on judging intentions — the intention cannot be verified, the procedure can.

📖 Source: Daron Acemoglu – James A. Robinson: Why Nations Fail

6.4.3 The Fundamental Law of Hungary

The proposal does not ask for a new constitutional principle but for the consistent application of an existing rule. The Fundamental Law records both the purpose of the management of national assets and the accounting obligation of organisations managing public money:

“Every organisation managing public funds shall be obliged to render account publicly of its management of public funds. Public funds and national assets shall be managed according to the principles of transparency and the purity of public life. Data relating to public funds and national assets shall be data of public interest.”

The same chapter also states that a contract for the transfer or use of national assets may be concluded only with an organisation of transparent ownership structure. Read together, the two provisions are a strong argument for MIAK’s proposal 3.2: if the assets of the foundations are public assets, then the data relating to them are data of public interest, and the public inventory is not an additional requirement but the technical realisation of an expectation which the constitution already sets. At the same time precision as to competences is important: the termination of the legal status of asset management foundations is a matter for legislation, while the Government may settle by decree the procedural order and the detailed rules of the takeover of public tasks — this is why MIAK proposes the protocol at the level of a decree and the obligation of separating resources at the level of an act.

📖 Source: Fundamental Law of Hungary (text in force on 17 April 2026) — Articles 38 and 39

6.5 International comparison

There are few clean international patterns for returning state assets from a private-law organisation, but the close analogies are instructive.

In the United Kingdom the autonomy of higher education institutions rests not on an ownership structure but on a regulatory framework: the Office for Students supervises the institutions on the basis of a set of conditions published in advance, and applies the same graduated procedure in every intervention. Compared with the Hungarian situation the decisive difference is not the institutional form but the fact that the yardstick of intervention is known in advance.

In Germany, in the case of universities maintained by foundations — for example the University of Göttingen — the state law records item by item what happens to the assets of the foundation when the status ceases. This kind of prior settlement is what was omitted in Hungary when the KEKVA act was created, and the absence of which now appears as a separate bargain in each procedure.

In Poland the judicial and European judicial afterlife of the institutional transformations after 2016 traced the pattern of which MIAK warns: a significant part of the transformations carried out quickly, in shortened procedures, came under judicial review years later, and the legal status of the intervening period remained lastingly uncertain. This experience is a direct argument for procedural closure — not in order to slow the process, but in order to reduce the risk of legal reversibility.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A1 — Public money dashboard
  • A3 — Publicity of asset declarations
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances

Education

  • O3 — Data-driven educational development

Culture

  • KU5 — Cultural participation index and open culture funding

Healthcare

  • E4 — Prevention data programme

Proposed new programme point: A uniform settlement protocol for asset management foundations — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 29 August 2026 — topic 4):

Knowledge base references (literature):

  • 📖 Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law — Essays on Law and Morality
  • 📖 Daron Acemoglu – James A. Robinson: Why Nations Fail
  • 📖 Fundamental Law of Hungary (text in force on 17 April 2026)

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A1, A3, A6)
  • MIAK policy area: Education (programme points; programme point ID: O3)
  • MIAK policy area: Culture (programme points; programme point ID: KU5)
  • MIAK policy area: Healthcare (programme points; programme point ID: E4)
  • MIAK press monitor, 29 August 2026 — topic 4, score: 86/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • Hungarian Official Gazette — the government decree on the takeover of certain public tasks relating to education and cultural affairs (28 August 2026)
  • Electronic financial statements portal (e-beszamolo.im.gov.hu) — the annual reports of the foundations concerned
  • State Audit Office — reports on the asset management foundations performing public tasks

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