The concrete measurement points, deadlines and performance indicators raised in MIAK analyses — gathered on one page, organised into clusters, refreshed weekly. Statuses are updated from the latest press monitor; new measurement points are pulled in from new analyses. Anything missing here is itself a signal: MIAK has not yet covered it.
The new procedural points all grow out of one event. On 21 October Pál Fürcht, former head of the Central Chief Prosecutor’s Office of Investigation, told a parliamentary inquiry that politically motivated instructions were given in the Völner–Schadl case, which makes sealing the files, lifting secrecy obligations and putting instructions in writing preconditions of one another. If certified copies are not inventoried by 6 November, a later rule on written instructions and annual instruction statistics can only protect the future; past interference will be impossible to prove. The three points on local recall referendums follow the same logic of sequence: a bill tabled without a public concept and a constitutional stress test could turn the dissolution of local councils into a partisan weapon.
Delayed: the 17th constitutional amendment and the asset-recovery act are in place, but of the five rule sets the electoral system has reportedly slipped by 18–24 months.
Delayed: on 13 October Parliament adopted the amendment to the child protection law by 139 votes to 51, but reports do not show whether the law requires baseline indicators to be published each year. The Prime Minister promised an entirely new child protection law for early 2027, and a government resolution of 14 October requires reports on the crisis programme in 2027 and 2028.
Whether the Speaker, after consulting the House Committee, issues a protocol requiring advance written notice of the planned procedural step, limiting how long a member stripped of immunity may remain in the building, and setting conditions for police action. Codification in a two-thirds law is proposed by 31 December 2026.
Whether the deputy acting with the Prosecutor General’s powers publishes a first monthly list by end-October of decisions on immunity requests, case transfers and assignments, without disclosing investigative details, and then every month.
Will the Interior Ministry publish 2025 and 30 September 2026 figures on cost, headcount, pay, response times and incidents, together with the savings it expects? This is separate from the ex-ante impact assessment requested on 14 July: it sets the baseline for measuring results after the decision.
Whether a bill amending the prosecution service acts is tabled in the National Assembly, giving the President of the Republic 30 days to nominate and Parliament a further 30 days to vote, and setting out a complete order of substitution. The two-thirds election rule should remain untouched.
Delayed: according to the director general of the Historical Archives of the State Security Services, tens of thousands of state security records with limited access so far will become public in two phases from 4 November, after the 22 October deadline. There has been no news of the joint justice and interior procedural protocol.
Whether a public analysis appears within 60 days on how the suspended priority investments, the lifted residency restrictions, the new housing deputy state secretary post and the floated vacancy tax interact. Success means project-level supply losses, extra demand in the 29 affected municipalities and a stated sequence, all in numbers.
Will the leadership of the prosecution service record where the certified copies of the seized documents are kept, since when, who has access, and whether they match the files sent to court? Met if the committee of inquiry receives an unclassified extract, access is logged and the copies are locked until the inquiry ends.
Whether a constitutional amendment is tabled providing that a constitutional office-holder’s mandate may end only on grounds already in force when the mandate began — effective from the next term, and therefore binding on the submitting majority too.
Whether the government adopts within 60 days a binding rule — covering the prime minister, ministers and spokespeople — barring them from calling suspects guilty, characterising evidence, or linking non-suspects’ names to pending cases.
Instead of million-forint fines and forced appearance, a tiered, income-proportionate sanction under judicial control; compelled appearance only as a last resort. The number of concrete legislative/institutional proposals emerging from the final reports is the measure of real output.
Fulfilled when the government reviews what the second 50,000 HUF voucher arriving mid-autumn can be spent on, since it barely serves the original back-to-school purpose. The signal is a broadened, realistic list of eligible uses.
Whether Parliament amends the two-thirds Prosecution Service Act so that, if neither a Prosecutor General nor a deputy is in office, a caretaker with limited powers is designated by a preset order of precedence, the mandate ending automatically once a new Prosecutor General is elected.
Will Parliament adopt a resolution barring MPs from publicly demanding specific investigative measures against named individuals or threatening the prosecutors and investigators handling a case? Met if it binds government and opposition MPs alike and compliance is reviewed by a cross-party ethics panel.
Whether the act on the status of prosecutors is amended so that the competent parliamentary committee must hold a public hearing of each nominee within 15 days of the nomination and issue a written, reasoned opinion.
Will the committee chair request written waivers from the classifying authorities by 30 October, and will the closed session take place by 30 November, with only vetted members if necessary? Met if the authorities issue reasoned decisions within 15 days, members without clearance receive an unclassified summary, and Szilvia Tomin is heard before the former politicians.
Whether a public, itemised inventory appears within 90 days showing which case types the government commissioner heading the county government office handles, on what legal basis, whether subject to instructions, and where it overlaps with local government powers.
Within 90 days, is there a documented procedure giving researchers access to the anonymised student-level PISA dataset, with settlement type, school type and family background variables, in machine-readable form?
By the end of the autumn session, do the parliamentary Rules of Procedure require, for posts filled by a two-thirds vote, a criteria-based nomination rationale of up to two pages per candidate, plus fixed procedural steps and deadlines?
Will the government issue the decree governing the Redress Fund, due to open on 1 January, setting out eligibility, the range of services and decision deadlines? Met if the decree bans confidentiality clauses, states that using the fund does not bar a claim for damages in court, and requires quarterly data publication.
Min. 80% raised to statutory rank in regular parliamentary debate, with committee debate + ex ante Constitutional Court norm-control.
Public hearings + plenary votes with opposition consultation.
Whether an itemised map appears before entry into force showing who decides today and who will decide in 2027 on financial, staffing, professional and development matters, and up to what value.
Whether the autumn session establishes an effective judicial remedy against the premature termination of a court leadership mandate, and bars organisational restructuring from serving on its own as grounds for termination.
Whether the Parliament Act and House Rules establish that no final vote on a constitutional amendment may be held within 60 days of tabling, and that the bill must pass two votes at least 30 days apart.
Whether law requires every child-protection inspection report to be published within 30 days of closure, anonymised and machine-readable, without a data request — naming the institution and its operator. Baseline: turnaround over 24 months.
Whether exit criteria with numerical thresholds appear by 31 December. In September 2026 the state of crisis is in its eleventh year — without criteria, extension stays automatic.
Whether the transport, urban design, affordability and sustainability criteria for the suspended projects are published in measurable form, and whether each project gets a decision deadline ahead of the 31 December expiry.
Whether the judiciary office and the justice ministry release by year-end the data for 9 February 2026 until the shutdown: hearings streamed by case type, registrations, refusals with reasons, known abuses and running costs.
Whether Parliament amends its Rules of Procedure to require a committee hearing in every immunity case, publish the minutes within 30 days of the vote, and demand written reasons whenever the plenary departs from the committee’s position.
Whether the prosecution service adopts internal rules requiring a standard statement within 72 hours, in cases of members stripped of immunity, on the statutory ground for custody and whether court-ordered coercive measures will be sought, without disclosing evidence. Target: 100 percent from the first half of 2027.
Will the official exercising the Prosecutor General’s powers issue an instruction requiring a public summary of reasons within eight days whenever a criminal complaint against a prime minister, minister, state secretary, MP or senior prosecutor is dismissed? Will the prosecution service also disclose the opening, legal basis and reason for any takeover of high-profile disciplinary cases?
Will a bill or amendment be tabled requiring every child-protection worker to report any suspicion of abuse through an external channel within 24 hours? Met if those who report are shielded from retaliation, failure to report carries employment consequences, and a withdrawn statement does not close the child-protection inquiry.
Will the official exercising the powers of the Prosecutor General issue an internal instruction that, in individual cases, especially on dropping or closing a case or handling records, only a written and reasoned order is valid, filed both in the case file and in a central instruction log? Met if urgent oral orders must be put in writing within 24 hours and, until then, a subordinate prosecutor need not carry out one that would end the proceedings or destroy evidence.
Whether sponsors attach an itemised statement on whether the amendment affects an objectively identifiable group on the day it takes effect — who, in what legal relationship, with what effect. Target: 100% from H2 2027.
Whether the prosecution service publishes, on the model of the courts’ allocation scheme, which case types go to which office and prosecutor on objective criteria, and requires written reasons on file for any departure.
Whether the Ministry of Justice publishes a body-by-body table showing, for the heads of independent bodies, the grounds for removal, who may initiate it, when the deadline starts, who decides and what remedies exist. Worth watching: how many bodies lack a clear rule on when the deadline begins.
At least 15 indicators, mandatory parliamentary debate; the institutionalised form of the annual, independent constitutional stress test (judicial independence, media pluralism, electoral integrity) raised in connection with the Sulyok case.
Whether the first term produces an assessment of after-school and supervision capacity in disadvantaged districts, followed by targeted compensation where shorter lessons open a care gap.
Whether the first county-level quarterly release appears, showing what share of assessments for children stranded in hospital close within eight days and the median wait between discharge and placement. The target is at least 90 percent compliance by end-2027.
Will a law be passed setting up a five-member fact-finding panel, nominated by professional bodies and without investigative powers, with access to the prosecution service’s internal files but no remit to rule on individual criminal liability? Its public report is due by 31 October 2027.
Will the government adopt a template for investigating institutional abuse that fixes in advance the roles of the ministries involved, deadlines for requesting records and the rules for sharing information? Met if a handover inventory of child-protection records becomes mandatory whenever an institution changes operator, and destroying records carries liability.
Are children per professional, vacancy rates, professional turnover and supervision coverage published by care type and provider, including church and foundation providers? Baseline: 17.2 per cent vacancies and turnover above 24 per cent.
Whether the social affairs ministry publishes, after the second pay instalment, how many staff left specialist child protection between November 2026 and February 2027, how many posts stayed vacant by institution type and county, and how many new hires arrived.
Whether the judiciary office president issues uniform rules requiring a public reasoning extract on the next working day for pre-trial detention rulings in cases of high public interest.
Whether the Government tables a bill setting enforceable aftercare minimums for young people leaving care, from transitional housing to a designated mentor up to age 25, attaching the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights’ opinion to the annual report and adding a two-year review clause.
Will an anonymised summary be published of the investigation into the 199 reports concerning 48 people received since the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs was set up? Met if it shows how many cases were referred to the authorities and in how many proceedings were opened.
If the issue reaches the agenda, will the responsible ministry publish a draft with a high signature threshold, time limits, a validity threshold and a new mandate only for the rest of the term, modelling at least three threshold options? The concept must also settle explicitly what happens to the directly elected mayor.
10+ objective indicators on the functioning of CC, SAO, prosecution, ombudsman, media authority; 2027 H1: first public report.
Share of decrees temporarily preserved under the Melléthei-Barna legislation falls below 30%; benchmark of rule-of-law restoration.
Whether the prime-ministerial term limit (passed 15 June 2026, signed for promulgation on 19 June) is still in force 12 months on, and whether broad consultation (a substantive Venice Commission opinion) confirms it after the fact — dissolving the charge of retroactivity and person-specific drafting.
Watch whether the prime-ministerial term limit is paired with an annual public “Institutional Health Report” measuring the real independence of the Constitutional Court, State Audit Office, prosecution and ombudsman with at least 10 objective indicators, published from 2027.
Whether a single cardinal-level framework applies the same logic to the President, constitutional judges, the audit-office chief and the ombudsman: an exhaustive list of termination grounds, with any extension binding only from the next term.
Whether binding numeric minimum requirements are adopted against which findings such as ‘hazardous furniture’, ‘mouldy bathroom’ or ’no food available’ can be measured — and verified by unannounced inspection.
Whether children in residential care demonstrably reach a child-rights advocate outside the institution — and whether the volume of reports through that channel is measured. In the cases now uncovered there was no one to turn to.
Does the annual constitutional stress test gain a dedicated chapter on selection procedures for posts filled by a two-thirds vote, asking whether the process would remain acceptable in the hands of an opposing majority? The findings should be public.
Are the four core indicators available in machine-readable form for each district: value added based on competence testing, early school leaving, teacher turnover and the share of unfilled teaching posts?
Whether the National Office for the Judiciary publishes annually how many SLAPP suits were filed over public-interest speech, how many were dismissed early and the average duration — the only way to gauge the effect of transposing Directive (EU) 2024/1069.
Whether the judiciary office publishes annually, court by court, the number of detention motions, orders and refusals, the share of lighter measures, the average length of detention, and how many such cases later ended in acquittal or discontinuation.
Will an independent expert panel test the draft against abuse scenarios, and will a structured public consultation with the local government associations be completed? The draft should state that only voters can start a recall, and that signature checks and the result can be challenged in court.
Whether a campaign-spending cap and an open candidate-selection procedure are introduced before or instead of the term limit, testing the least intrusive effective tool first.
Watch whether Hungary’s Digital Services Coordinator (NMHH) gains dedicated, quantified capacity: staff able to run technical audits, algorithm-inspection competence, and predictable procedures. Fulfilled when expert headcount and the number of closed domestic cases rise measurably.
An independent expert review on whether checks and balances work both ways should run on a 12-month cycle. A good sign is the first public stress test being completed within a year.
Whether Parliament amends the national-security act so that covert intelligence gathering is authorised by a judge — or an independent body subject to subsequent judicial confirmation — as required by the Szabó and Vissy judgment.
Whether an annual public report appears on case duration, indictment and withdrawal rates by case type, the status of high-profile cases and the documentation of instruction powers.
Whether a 12-month measurement phase precedes any decision on a vacancy tax, with a single public definition of vacancy built on linked land registry, utility consumption and short-term rental data.
Does the Education Authority publish a dedicated chapter showing how the 21-point drop in reading and the rise in low performers are distributed by settlement type, region and family background? That is what reveals whether this is a uniform slide or specific groups falling behind.
Is the 2027 report published against the 2026 baseline: children persistently on the run (about 800), share returned to birth families, babies stuck in hospital (358) and time to placement, and child psychiatry waiting times?
Will the Interior Ministry submit to Parliament its 12-month report benchmarking cost, response times and protection incidents against the baseline? The reform succeeds if costs fall while the other two indicators do not worsen.
Whether statutory-deadline notification is introduced for those whose surveillance led to no action — this is what closes the remedy loop.
Whether Parliament sets up a cross-party expert body on whether the Constitutional Court should regain a narrow, itemised power of substantive review over amendments — with minutes available within 15 days of each sitting.
Is an anonymised, aggregate report produced on five dimensions: housing, employment or education, health and addiction treatment, criminal justice involvement, and child protection involvement of their own children?
Will the prosecution service publish the annual number of instructions given in individual cases, by case type, and how many were in writing? Met if the written share reaches 100 per cent and the rule is written into the cardinal (two-thirds) Act on the prosecution service in the first half of 2027.
Will the local government digitalisation platform get a module where councils publish roll-call votes, group membership and the dates of group switches in machine-readable form? The yardstick is what share of settlements publish this data by the end of 2027.
Watch whether infinite scroll, autoplay, and addiction-tuned notifications are off by default for minors, with size-proportionate guidance separating large platforms from small domestic providers. Fulfilled when coverage on big platforms hits 100% while SME burdens stay distinct.
Watch whether cyclic term limits extend to key independent offices and whether an annual constitutional “stress test” is established. Fulfilment is signalled by a public, yearly stress test and depoliticised appointments.
Whether a public competence map and short impact note accompanies every competence-reshuffling decree, retroactively including the one that moved intelligence oversight. The gazette text alone does not show who oversees what.
Whether the committee sets down in its rules that a hearing does not substitute for criminal proceedings, and how it handles documents touched by an ongoing investigation. Without it, even the final report’s legislative yield becomes contestable.
Whether an amendment establishes that only a court may order asset deprivation, after a substantive evidentiary procedure. Without it, confiscation absent proof of an offence touches the constitutional core of property protection.
Whether a published legislative impact assessment measuring the new provision against the European Court of Human Rights’ property-protection case law is produced before the final vote. A later adverse ruling costs more than a prior comparison.
Whether the National Security Committee’s scrutiny is strengthened, and how many deputy-state-secretary and agency-head appointments follow a published scored framework. The benchmark already exists: the tax-authority head selection set it.
Whether extension decrees come with public reasoning backed by indicators. Proposed target: 100 per cent of decrees issued from 2027.
Whether intelligence oversight is organisationally separated from government communication duties. Holding both in one hand was among the most sharply criticised structural flaws of the previous term.
Whether the new provision gets a five-year sunset clause and a mandatory parliamentary review. Extraordinary instruments becoming permanent is a recurring pattern of the past decade.
Whether an independent expert report is produced by end-2026 on how the checks-and-balances system performed in the head-of-state vs. majority conflict, and whether the precedent would block a future, opposite-direction concentration of power.
Whether the constitution-making promised for the autumn introduces parity-based or qualified-consensus nomination for the heads of the Constitutional Court, the judiciary and the regulatory bodies, so that no single two-thirds majority can pack them, and whether the process runs with a multi-month debate.
Whether the House Rules fix the steps for the next presidential election: a minimum interval between the nomination deadline and the vote, a mandatory public committee hearing, and publication of valid nominations before the vote.
Whether the structural-prevention anti-corruption package the government announced on 5 June 2026 is tabled and put on the National Assembly’s agenda; and whether the text builds on preventive logic (procurement transparency, machine-readable asset data, whistleblower protection, an independent anti-corruption authority) or merely on punitive logic.
Whether the number of national-security authorisations is published annually, broken down by service and legal basis — individual cases stay secret, aggregate figures should not.
Whether the new single heads of vocational training centres are selected through a public, documented professional competition on pre-set competence criteria, excluding political influence.
Whether an annually repeated, independent and public review starts on whether the system of checks and balances would block a hypothetical concentration of power under the new constitutional set-up.
Whether a pending constitutional court petition is awaited before removal proceedings begin, and whether the full reasoning of the removal motion is public.
Whether a uniform, public statutory access-criteria framework appears before 22 October that anonymises the sensitive data of non-public third parties by NAIH standards.
Whether the sharpest elements of the 17th amendment (Sulyok’s removal, 70+ Constitutional Court justices) are subjected to independent constitutional scrutiny, and whether the Venice Commission’s opinion is awaited and its recommendations built into the final text.
Whether every law adopted via fast-track gets a public ex post impact review within 12 months (did it meet its goal, how many amendments it needed).
After seven constitutional justices recused themselves on 19 June 2026 and the Monday (22 June) hearing was struck from the agenda, whether the motion on the head of state’s removability returns to the Court’s agenda and ends with a quorate panel and a reasoned decision — or stays indefinitely unresolved due to the lack of a quorum.
Watch whether constitutional amendments touching the status of the president, constitutional courts and independent institutions get a mandatory minimum 30-day genuine consultation instead of the planned five days.
Whether the announced public consultation gets fixed rules: a public platform, a summary of submissions, and documentation of what the parliamentary groups took on board.
Whether constitutional-level law-making requires a public impact assessment examining whether the proposal really creates a general rule, whom it affects and how reversible it is.
What share of the office’s records is placed, documented and inventoried, into independent archival custody (target: 100 percent), preventing records from disappearing amid the merger’s disorder.
Whether the acting head of state publishes the nomination criteria beforehand, and whether the candidate answers at a public parliamentary hearing — including on procedural guarantees in pending high-profile cases.
Whether a standalone children’s-rights specialist ombudsman and an independent monitoring role are set up, whether the Equal Treatment Authority is restored, and whether the competent ministry gives a mandatory, reasoned public response to the recommendations of the Children and Youth Participation Group (within 60 days, even in case of rejection).
Whether the parliamentary National Security Committee gains substantive information and investigation powers accessible to the opposition too, and whether independent review of special intelligence tools is operational.
In how many of the renewed public-law offices (Constitutional Court, Kúria, prosecution, head-of-state circle) a statutory, depoliticised, professional nomination procedure precedes the actual replacement; target: 100%, so that the renewal does not become a loyalty-based refill.
How many competences are altered or how many institutions are renamed during the public-law renewal to bypass a removal; target: 0 — no stripping of the head of state’s veto, no institutional-renaming trick to dodge the bound procedure.
Whether the new intelligence chiefs are selected on public, pre-set professional competence criteria and mandatory pre-appointment security vetting, not on political loyalty.
Whether nomination starts with minuted parliamentary consultation and whether candidates’ impartiality and professional fitness are tested at a public hearing — the mandate runs for twelve years.
Whether every fast-tracked market-structure provision justified by the crisis gets a mandatory 18-month review clause and a public register showing on whose proposal it entered the text.
Whether a public working paper citing specific legal provisions appears by the day of the vote on which constitutional rule makes the new head of state’s election valid.
Whether the Venice Commission issues its (urgency-procedure) opinion on the removability of the head of state, and whether the Hungarian decision takes it into account; whether the head-of-state question is settled solely within the removal procedure under the Fundamental Law (two-thirds + Constitutional Court), not by ultimatum.
Whether a public compliance table is produced for every recommendation of the October opinion (recommendation → accepted/rejected → reasoning), with a parliamentary committee hearing.
Whether a public legislative impact assessment is prepared before the final vote on suspending ongoing FX-loan lawsuits and enforcement actions (who wins/loses, fiscal and legal effects).
Whether the Constitutional Court interpretive ruling is issued before the final vote on the contested constitutional amendment, and whether the majority and the head of state commit to accepting it in advance.
Whether it becomes standard to ask of every step touching checks and balances: could a future majority reverse it — and if not, whether broad consensus should be required.
Whether the President’s Office — and the Speaker’s Office when acting as deputy — states, for every refused appointment, which limb of Article 9(6) it relies on: a missing statutory condition, or a serious disturbance to the democratic operation of the state.
Whether an independent expert body produces a public, quantified annual report on constitutional-amendment practice: days between submission and final vote, whether an impact assessment was made, whether the amendment is a general norm or touches an identifiable set of persons, and whether it triggered international proceedings.
Whether the House Rules require that substantive debate on a constitutional amendment may begin only once an independent expert analysis of abuse scenarios has been published within 15 days of tabling.
Whether the Court issues a two-page companion summary with every substantive ruling — the question, who asked it, the decision, its reasoning, and the express limits of its scope.
Whether the law sets one multiplier for the prime minister’s salary whether or not the PM holds a parliamentary seat, with a separate transparent offsetting rule and a mandatory public review every five years.
Before public consultation on the new National Core Curriculum begins, does each of the five announced programmes have a public one-page annex on the international evidence, the expected effect size and how success will be measured?
Is it set out in advance that renewing the mandate of up to five years depends on background-adjusted district indicators, with published reasoning and a developmental rather than punitive mid-term review?
Whether the government tables a narrower re-regulating bill within a year that removes witness hearings and minors’ cases from online publicity but keeps verdict delivery and cases involving public bodies online.
Whether an independent professional panel — nominated by judicial self-government, law faculties, the bar and the ombudsman — is set up to score Constitutional Court candidates against published criteria, with per-candidate reasoning.
Whether the House rules require every parliamentary group to state its position in writing on shortlisted candidates, and attach a procedural consequence to walkouts — this time there was none.
Whether the annual constitutional stress test extends to public-law selection procedures, asking one question: could the same procedure be repeated by an opposing two-thirds majority without damaging the institution.
Whether a conflict-of-interest register for senior prosecutors is created, separate from the asset-declaration system, against which the allocation system automatically checks case participants, obliging the responsible head to declare on a hit.
Whether the amendment expands the prosecutor general’s reporting duty with public statistics by case type: processing times, cases closed by limitation, changes of supervision, recusals and disciplinary proceedings.
Whether an amendment writes into the act a yearly ministerial report to Parliament, due each 31 May, plus statutory 2029 targets for at least three indicators: long-term runaways, children stranded in hospital and unfilled professional posts.
Whether the law replacing the KEKVA foundations protects procedures rather than people: binding conflict-of-interest rules and public selection criteria for governing boards, peer-reviewed research funding through the national research office, and a mandatory public impact assessment before any of these guarantees can be changed.
Whether the Prosecutor General’s Office publishes, for each request to lift immunity, its own statement of reasons covering the legal classification, the history of the case and why suspension is needed now. Target: 100 percent from the first half of 2027.
Will the Riot Police and the counter-terror unit (TEK) report to Parliament’s standing committee on law enforcement on police measures taken inside the Parliament building, camera placement principles and incidents involving MPs? Will the Speaker be consulted before the head of the directorate guarding the building is appointed?
Will the parliamentary committee of inquiry classify every claim in its final report as backed by documents, resting only on witness testimony, or denied by the body concerned? Met if questions touching on pending criminal cases are taken in pre-announced closed sessions, and the prosecution service’s leadership clarifies in writing how committee testimony relates to the ongoing disciplinary proceedings.
The cluster’s balance worsened again this week: both the ministerial strategic action plans and the ambulance-service leadership selection lapsed without a document. The remaining points therefore no longer measure the pacing of the first 100 days but whether the cabinet retrofits the public reasoning it skipped — the transparency point on deputy-state-secretary appointments in cluster 1 is the first test of that.
The cluster’s focus has moved from the EUR 4.2 billion released in October to Ukraine funding and the next budget framework. The Commission will only present options for covering Ukraine’s 2027 funding gap in November, while António Costa wants a deal on the multiannual budget at the 26 November summit. Because the post-summit report on Hungary’s envelope and the Horizon condition list were both missed, the government heads into the November bargaining without having published either the extra cohesion money it wants or its position on Ukraine funding. The new points — handling Ukraine funding without using it as a bargaining chip, and conditional support for an EU Black Sea budget line — test whether the two files stay separate or become hostages to each other.
Delayed: on 22 October European Parliament committees voted for higher envelopes than the Commission proposed, and Costa is pushing for a deal in November. On 20 October the Prime Minister tied any agreement on the joint budget to settling the migration fine, but no scenario-based Hungarian allocation estimate has been published.
Delayed: the Prime Minister presented the headline figures of the 2027 budget on 19 October, but the bill had still not been tabled by 25 October and is now expected at the end of the month. On 20 October the finance minister already assumed, citing the agreement with the EU, that the daily one million euro migration fine will end, so how conditional EU items are treated can only be checked once the bill is tabled.
Delayed: the Commission will only present its options for financing Ukraine in November, and according to Costa a decision on the roughly 70 billion euro gap for 2027 could come at the 26–27 November summit. By 25 October no written Hungarian government position had been published on joining a common loan or on the budget exposure involved.
Whether the foreign ministry initiates talks with Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Slovakia on the impact-assessment requirement, and whether a domestic scenario is prepared for checks reintroduced against Hungary.
Whether the post is filled through an open competition on published professional criteria with a mandate not aligned to the electoral cycle — and whether a short foreign-policy doctrine is published.
Whether Hungary submits a written proposal within the ICPDR for a drought-period water-sharing protocol: shared real-time data, prior notification of cooling-related abstractions and a rapid consultation procedure.
Whether the government argues in Council that the single-plan rules must reserve a mandatory minimum share for the least developed regions, counting rural and cohesion spending together.
Whether the government backs a per-farm cap and degressivity as binding EU rules, and whether funds freed above the cap stay in the national envelope, redirected to smaller farms.
Whether the government publishes what spreading principal repayment to 2058 would cost Hungary in extra interest — an issue-based alignment with the southern member states is only meaningful with that number on the table.
Will the government publish a machine-readable list of every open infringement case against Hungary and every unimplemented EU court ruling, showing for each the current stage, next deadline, lead ministry, planned remedy and the estimated financial exposure under Article 260?
Will a public government resolution confirm that Hungary accepts the primacy of EU law in intra-EU investment disputes, and will the state, as shareholder and with due regard for minority investors, push MOL to suspend its enforcement proceedings in the United States?
(a) shared procurement/asset-declaration standards with Czech-Polish-Slovak partners; (b) Western Balkans programme bundle; (c)
KP24 ‘Year of EU/NATO’ annual review week first session on the January 2027 agenda.
OBT powers restored to pre-2011 level; judicial appointment-promotion via independent professional panel; full transposition of latest Venice Commission recommendations.
Whether the government designates which Hungarian body is responsible for initiating the Article 36 and 48 crisis instruments of the digital services regulation, and by what procedure the signal reaches the Board and the Commission.
Whether the Government sets out in writing, and presents to the National Assembly’s European Affairs Committee, that it supports temporary limits on new members’ veto rights only with a fixed expiry date, equal application to all newcomers and safeguards that also cover minority rights.
Whether the agriculture administration publishes an impact assessment recalculated for Hungarian production and consumption in three layers: exposure by product group, domestic substitution capacity, and the consumer-price effect by income decile — with a machine-readable methodology.
Hungary’s operational EPPO accession (within 180 days); from the 14 May cabinet declaration of intent to actual membership.
Will the government publish an action plan for the enabling conditions tied to the roughly 3.5 billion euros still frozen? For each condition it should show the amount at stake, the Commission’s objection, the legal change needed, the lead ministry and the date the bill goes to Parliament, plus an independent legal check on whether the child-protection amendment fully implements the April ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU).
Of the EUR 34 bn envelope, min. 35% contracted by month 6; 65% contracted + 25% paid out by 16 May 2027.
Whether Hungary tables a proposal making it mandatory to record member-state carve-out requests raised in sanctions negotiations and publish them once the act is adopted. Target: at least five co-sponsoring states by mid-2027.
The Council of Europe Venice Commission’s substantive opinion on the tabled constitutional amendment (8-year PM term limit, abolition of the Sovereignty Protection Office) — an independent professional yardstick.
Will the government publish what the summit conclusions actually say about the second EU emissions trading system (ETS2), what legislative step is under way and what start date currently applies in law? Alongside that, will it set out how the Social Climate Fund will be targeted, with expected extra costs and compensation by income decile and region?
Will the government appear before Parliament’s European Affairs Committee to set out the exact size of Hungary’s envelope, the cuts it will not accept in any package, the new EU own resources it can live with, and how it keeps the migration fine separate from the budget bargain?
Will the EU settle Ukraine’s roughly EUR 70 billion funding gap for 2027 at the 26–27 November summit without a Hungarian blockade, keeping it apart from the disputes over the migration fine, the next multiannual budget and EU funds? Met if any Hungarian opt-out leaves the other member states free to proceed and the fiscal impact of any commitment is set out under the debt-sustainability framework.
Whether a public prior impact assessment precedes any accession decision — full per-person cost against the domestic procedure, expected return rate and litigation risk, in figures.
Krk terminal Hungarian quota-increase agreement; diversification framework act.
Will a register of the commitments underpinning the unfreezing, showing the legal level of each, appear before the Council decides, and will the government table a bill to put into law those that rest only on decrees or temporary rules, including the reforms of the public-interest trust foundations?
Whether a preliminary range estimate, commissioned by the finance ministry from an independent institute, shows the extra growth EU funds generated by county and how much flowed back to firms in net-contributor countries. The full study with open model and data is proposed for 31 March 2027.
Whether the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs prepare, before the next negotiating round, a Hungarian impact sheet on the Black Sea envelope in the next multiannual financial framework (MFF) and present it to Parliament’s EU affairs committee. It should set three conditions: no money taken from cohesion funds, spending through joint and open procurement, and coverage of the lower Danube.
Whether, within 60 days of the internal market cluster opening on 13 October, the Government holds structured consultations with farm and haulage associations and publishes a data-backed list of the product groups and services for which Hungary seeks transitional periods or safeguard clauses, and for how long.
Whether it is fixed in advance that consent to be bound requires a parliamentary decision rather than a government decree, so public debate precedes the decision instead of following it.
Watch whether an MFF agreement is reached by the Council’s end-2026 target and whether the 2028–2034 cohesion envelope stays at or above the ~EUR 376bn 2021–2027 level in real terms.
Watch whether the government publishes negotiating principles by year-end on phasing in direct farm payments and on cohesion-envelope safeguards. Fulfilled when the Hungarian mandate puts both budget protections in writing.
Watch whether the government sets a transparency framework in advance for any Ukraine-reconstruction role touching Hungarian budget or state guarantees, with public project sheets, beneficial owners, and cost-benefit analysis. Fulfilled when all such projects start with public data sheets.
Whether the government publishes which EU files it pursues with which partners and to what end — and, in retrospect, what it achieved. The relaunched V4 agenda is the first test.
Whether a single public interface shows the entire EU funding envelope at project level — beneficiary, tax number, contracted and disbursed amounts, deadline, output indicator and its status — with a downloadable dataset.
Whether the October–December legislative phase produces an analysis of what share of EU-conditioned institutional safeguards rests on statutes amendable by simple majority.
Whether the government argues in Council that every rule-of-law condition in the 2028–2034 framework comes with a public, verifiable list of performance and release criteria from adoption, graduated suspension and fixed decision deadlines.
Will the government, together with the Friends of Cohesion, push for a rule-based inflation-correction clause and see it written into the final deal targeted for Christmas? Met if the framework ceilings can be adjusted to actual prices at the mid-term review whenever EU inflation persistently exceeds the 2 per cent deflator.
Will the government publish, by programme and by year, how much was lost for good and how much was reallocated, which projects were dropped and what the domestic budget paid to replace them, together with every EU funding deadline for the next 24 months? Success means the gap between the EUR 6.3 billion suspended and the EUR 4.2 billion released is fully explained, and the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) audits the account.
In the Council talks on the rules for partnership plans, will Hungary push for a common error-rate method, independence requirements for audit authorities, on-the-spot audit rights for the European Court of Auditors and quarterly project-level data? Success means these end up in the final rules.
Whether automatic ex-post audits of emergency procurement exemptions start in 2027, applied retroactively to 2020 and to the current government’s own procedures, with published findings.
Whether the full project lifecycle — from call to ex-post outcome measurement — moves into machine-readable open data, and whether projects above HUF 1bn get a published ex-ante impact assessment.
Whether the January 2027 data-sharing obligation and platform opening are met on time — for the Hungarian digital market and AI start-ups these are what break down entry barriers.
Within 30 days of the Commission’s decision, will the government publish, milestone by milestone, the Commission’s finding and the amount paid or withheld, the extra cost of projects continued from domestic funds, and the impact on the 2026 and 2027 deficit path? Will it say whether any shortfall is covered by borrowing, spending cuts or revenue?
Whether any signed agreement carries an exit clause, a notice period and an annual public reporting duty, including guaranteed access for independent human-rights monitoring.
Whether itemised data — price, supplier, actual use — is available for at least 95% of the 19,002 ventilators by 31 March 2027, so the estimated damage of hundreds of billions can be backed by figures.
Does the Finance Ministry disclose, programme by programme, how much RRF money was reimbursed in December and how that compares with the HUF 2,186.9 billion pre-financed in August? The ex-post check is due by the end of Q1 2027.
Whether the government publishes twice yearly a machine-readable breakdown of how much EU funding hangs on each condition by programme and beneficiary type, what is met, what is pending and by when.
Will the government table by February 2027, and Parliament pass by the end of March, an amendment aligning Hungarian law with Directive 2016/1919 — guaranteeing counsel without a formal request, a decision before the first interrogation and uniform means-testing?
Whether, for all projects under the EUR 4.2 billion envelope, the place of final use is published at district level, with a list of affected districts for network investments, and whether the Government sets the district-level outcome indicators it expects for each programme.
How much of the ~EUR 19-22 bn Hungarian EU funds frozen in April 2026 became accessible; target: ≥50% (≥EUR 10 bn); 100% transparency of Hungarian EU Council votes.
Whether, six months after the release, the Government reports on the same indicators to the Commission, the Council and the relevant European Parliament committees. Worth watching: whether the share of single-bid tenders falls from its baseline.
Upward movement of Hungary’s 2026 position (~30%) in the EU Justice Scoreboard perceived judicial independence indicator; the 90-180 day OBT-OBH reform’s outcome metric.
From the signing of the political agreement, how much of the HUF 12 000 bn was actually drawn down in 12 months.
European Commission RRF tracker; common outcome variable of the EU accession cluster.
Whether a public jurisdiction map is produced before the 2027 criminal-procedure amendments are tabled: which body acts for each case type and offence — the national prosecution service or the EPPO — and what happens where both could.
Whether a public impact assessment is produced for at least five product groups (grain, oilseeds, poultry, eggs, honey) under three scenarios, with regional price, farm and employment estimates.
Watch whether every released EU project gets a public data sheet, 100% project checks and independent cost-benefit analysis above HUF 500m become mandatory, and clawback is built into every contract. Fulfilment signal: actual recovery cases triggered by missed targets.
Alongside Hungary’s partnership plan, will the government commit to a peer review of the national audit authority by another member state’s authority every two years, an annual published error-rate estimate, and a public hearing of the authority’s annual report in the relevant parliamentary committee?
Whether an independent research institute publishes, with its raw data, an evaluation comparing supported districts with similar unsupported ones, and whether its findings feed into negotiations on the 2028–2034 EU national and regional partnership plan.
Watch whether, alongside mandatory machine-readable project records and a clawback mechanism, the funding share of the most disadvantaged districts moves from today’s 12–15% toward the 25% target.
Whether risk indicators — single-bid tender share, value of contract amendments, winner concentration — are fixed before large-scale disbursements start. A benchmark set afterwards is not a benchmark.
Whether Parliament receives a briefing on the negotiating mandate before any deal on waiving the EUR 1m daily penalty. Proposed target: the daily penalty ending by H1 2027.
Whether, after closing all 33 chapters, the government holds a legally binding referendum on Ukrainian accession; whether the rejection of accelerated (without substantively closing the chapters) accession holds; with an accompanying ex ante public impact assessment of the agricultural, labour-market and fund-allocation effects.
How many of the 27 preconditions are met substantively (adopted law and a working institution, not just an announcement), and how much of the EUR 16.4bn actually arrives.
Delayed: the EUR 1 million-a-day migration fine is still running and, according to the press, has already reached about EUR 1 billion. The government extended the mass-migration crisis situation to year-end, and asylum rules have still not been aligned with EU law.
The start of the actual (not merely unfrozen) disbursement scheduled by András Kármán for Q4 2026; the payment requests go in in September. “Agreement”, “unfreezing” and “disbursement” are three separate statuses — at present the EUR 16.4bn is unfrozen, not paid out.
Whether the Hungarian transposition of the EU anti-corruption directive that entered into force on 1 June 2026 is substantive (not merely the conceptual minimum), and whether the national anti-corruption strategy contains concrete, deadlined commitments (statute of limitations, investigative toolkit, prevention) with public performance indicators; and whether it passes the rule-of-law commissioner’s (McGrath) review.
Whether the national risk assessment adds, as a standalone item, the scenario in which an information operation triggers a mass physical border event within hours — and whether it is run through at least one simulation exercise.
Whether by autumn 2026 the government submits a clear, public legislative timetable for transposing the Pact (reception, border procedure, solidarity mechanism, with a mandatory impact assessment), and whether the accruing infringement-penalty burden halts.
Whether Hungary initiates talks with the affected member states and the Commission on a pre-agreed, uniform reading of the 15 percent share threshold and the “verifiable steps” formula.
Whether, by 2027, a permanent, trained negotiating capacity is built that prepares Hungarian positions cluster by cluster for the Ukraine/Moldova accession process — so that the Hungarian interest (agriculture, cohesion, Transcarpathian rights) is pursued through issue-based coalitions rather than ad hoc vetoes.
Watch whether measurable, verifiable indicators for Transcarpathian Hungarian education and language rights enter the Hungarian assessment of the accession Fundamentals cluster. Fulfilled when the first milestones are documented rather than left as general pledges.
Whether the six or seven like-minded member states the prime minister mentioned form a formal, issue-based coalition (joint position, amendments) ahead of the qualified-majority vote.
Whether every cohesion and recovery project gets a standard machine-readable sheet (beneficiary, amount, objective, deadline, delivery) — starting with the newly opened EUR 552m energy envelope.
Whether at least 60 percent of development funds is allocated by a pre-published formula weighted on the district development index — with the formula, the weights and the input data all public.
For what share of divergent Hungarian EU votes a public, fact-based justification is produced (currently near 0 percent, target toward 100 percent), instead of a veto threat.
Whether Hungary proposes that notifications of internal border checks must contain a quantified proportionality justification, an automatic expiry date and an economic impact estimate for neighbouring member states.
Whether the proposal appears as a joint initiative of several member states — towards Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands — built around a single procedural question rather than as a standing bloc.
Whether every dismissed head of mission produces a standardised protocol on pending negotiations, Hungarian commitments, outstanding cases and institutional contacts.
Whether contracts above HUF 5bn must obtain a published expert opinion before signature on the level of competition, unit-price benchmarking, indicator measurability and beneficial-ownership transparency.
Whether a written, numbers-based Hungarian negotiating position is prepared on reception and processing capacity, the cost of expanding it and the burden-sharing formula acceptable to Hungary — carried in an issue-based coalition.
Whether official communication is required to cite the source, measurement date and exact definition for every migration figure — five different numbers circulated about Ceuta within a single day.
Whether the government transposes the recast energy-efficiency directive (the October 2025 deadline has passed, an infringement procedure is running) and notifies the implementing steps — avoiding a fine before the EU Court. Indicator: closing the running infringement procedures / avoiding the judicial stage.
The government adopted the EU Migration Pact; whether it publishes a mandatory, public, quantified impact assessment before introduction (transposition) — affected numbers, procedure types, cost, burden on border settlements. Main KPI: whether it appears (yes/no) and at what depth.
Whether the linguistic/educational/cultural commitments (restoration of the minority school system, free use of Hungarian in education, national symbols in settlements with 10%+ Hungarian population) are written into concrete Ukrainian legislation and into the action plan submitted to the EU, with deadlined milestones. Indicator: the rate of legal transposition, the number of restored schools.
Whether a public ex ante impact assessment of Ukrainian accession effects on Hungarian agriculture, cohesion-fund allocation and the labour market is prepared before chapters are substantively closed, and whether Hungary requests transitional mechanisms.
Whether the government adopts a public, itemised interest list: guarantees for the Transcarpathian minority, transitional agricultural safeguards and a labour-market impact assessment as measurable conditions.
Whether refugee-status review decisions are made in individualised proceedings, with reasoning and judicial remedy (not in a group, political frame); a low overturn rate.
Whether every return-hub agreement affecting Hungary comes with a public, IOM/UNHCR-verified human-rights assessment (target: 100 percent), with a non-refoulement guarantee and limited detention.
How many EU files see Hungary act with a documented joint position for predictable, rule-of-law competition enforcement — linking the fine to the tariff would be a bad bargain.
Whether the unblocked funds appear on a public project list from the first disbursement wave — this, not the press conference, decides the credibility of the released billions.
Watch whether, instead of unpredictable blocking (e.g. Ukraine accession), a public one-page data-based justification accompanies every EU Council vote. Fulfilment signal: public justification published for 100% of votes.
Whether Hungary tables, jointly with Polish, Romanian and Slovak partners, a legally drafted mechanism: quantitative steps, review points, CAP compensation and a definite sunset date.
Whether a proportionate clawback applies to projects missing their targets, and whether data-driven anomaly screening runs by linking procurement and beneficiary records.
Watch whether future China-related agreements are prepared using the
KP21 four-dimensional framework (economic sustainability, demographics, transition risk, multipolar room for maneuver) with an exit scenario. Target: 100% from the next cycle.
Whether a public cost-benefit analysis by an independent institute becomes a precondition of drawdown for every project above HUF 500m.
Whether Hungary clearly backs a unified European tariff response — proportionate, targeted counter-measures without self-defeating escalation, in coalition with member states sharing car-industry exposure.
Whether the next Commission rule-of-law report contains no new concern over the independence of anti-corruption bodies (Integrity Authority, State Audit Office, prosecution), and whether these bodies’ powers or budgets are not reduced during leadership changes.
Whether Hungary argues in the Council that a member state reintroducing internal checks must publish a standard impact sheet every 30 days: waiting times, affected lorries, commuters and persons turned back.
Whether a region-by-region cohesion impact calculation is prepared on the funding-dilution effect of Ukrainian accession, and whether Hungary tables — in coalition — a gradual phase-out proposal.
Whether the accelerated procedure observes asylum/human-rights standards (effective remedy, protection of unaccompanied minors, non-refoulement), and whether the division of competences holds (law enforcement ≠ defence task); whether the Hungarian position in the solidarity mechanism is principled and data-backed. KPI: a faster procedure without a deterioration in the remedy rate.
Whether accession to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office is completed, and whether the division of competences with the asset-recovery authority is settled before the Commission’s year-end anti-corruption package.
Whether the government states before the Council negotiation what transition period it considers necessary, for which active substances it seeks product-specific grace periods, and what accompanying measure it proposes for involving partner countries — a position published afterwards is no longer a negotiating tool.
Whether the government publishes if it backs Kyiv’s compensation request and on what terms, whether it asks for transit-capacity financing to be built into the package, and what safeguard it requires so that grain intended for transit does not end up on the domestic market.
Whether the module — built on income and wealth data, territorially weighted, with automatic entitlement assessment — is ready and run on a sample of 100,000–200,000 households, with targeting accuracy published.
Whether the government prepares an impact summary for each EU sanctions carve-out it seeks and publishes the non-confidential part within 60 days of the decision: the exemption’s estimated annual value, those affected, the cost of alternatives.
Whether Hungarian prosecutors handling EU-budget cases are designated through an open competition on pre-published professional criteria, with the call, the assessment criteria and the reasoned decision all public. Target: by mid-2027.
Whether an act guarantees that awarded grants continue to be paid from the central budget if EU funds are suspended — the KEKVA case showed the cost of government default currently lands on universities and students.
Will the government publish a full, ranked list of projects for the EUR 4.2 billion envelope, with costs, timelines, outcome indicators and an independent cost-benefit analysis, before the first grant agreement is signed? Departures from the ranking should require a written, public explanation.
Whether the Government sends the Council presidency and the Commission three written conditions for its consent: a uniform, measurable minority-rights benchmark in every candidate’s negotiating framework, an emergency brake for newly majority-based matters, and a public review after three years.
Whether the Government openly supports, in the Council working party, tying Erasmus+ funding to the rule of law with predefined criteria, and publishes 2026-2027 outgoing student numbers for the 21 previously excluded universities compared with pre-exclusion years.
Within the Commission’s two-month reply deadline, will the Ministry of Justice put out for public consultation a draft, with an impact assessment, on legal aid and ex officio appointment of defence counsel in criminal cases — and attach it to Hungary’s reply to Brussels?
Will the government publish, during the phase of the talks led by European Council President António Costa, an updated estimate of Hungary’s burden under three scenarios: fixed repayment, stretched repayment and new joint borrowing? Met if the position also states the condition under which Hungary would back slower repayment.
Before the European Parliament delegation visits, will the government publish a report that matches each concern in Parliament’s 2018 resolution with the legal change made, its entry into force, the first measurable result and any open issue? A strong signal would be if written comments from civil society and judicial bodies are published alongside it.
Will Hungary join the member states opposing cuts to the transport strand of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), and commit to funding projects from the protected money on the basis of a public cost-benefit ranking? It is also worth tracking whether the final deal keeps CEF transport at the level the Commission proposed.
Will the government table an asylum bill that complies with the EU court ruling, and from November publish the accumulated fine every month? Success means that once Parliament passes the law, the government asks the Commission to confirm compliance and the daily penalty stops.
Accountability gained tools this week but not yet safeguards. A decree of 21 October gave the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH) powers to issue wanted notices and arrest warrants and to process biometric data, and former central bank governor György Matolcsy was detained on suspicion of economic fraud. The new NVVH points (a public map of legal bases, a data-handling policy reviewed by the data protection authority NAIH, a quarterly tally of coercive measures) and the asset-recovery reports are therefore two sides of the same coin: the stronger the recovery toolkit, the more judicial oversight and public accounting decide whether results will hold up in court. The sports conflict-of-interest and Norway Grants points apply the same test forward: closing the re-election loophole and independent grant assessment show whether new rules exclude the old pattern, not just the old players.
Delayed: the asset transfer happened, but the rule-of-law redesign of stewardship — a public management charter, conflict-of-interest rules, reporting duties — did not come with it.
Delayed: on 20 October the finance minister named the review of unfavourable concession contracts, including spending tied to the M5 and M6 motorways, as the largest item in the 2027 spending cuts. The concession contract, the payment schedule and an audited value-for-money assessment are still not public.
Delayed: according to the Budapest-Capital Regional Court, the winding-up of the 14 dissolved foundations runs until 31 October, and no itemised inventory per foundation has appeared so far. On 4 October the Budapest Public Development Council had already decided to use recovered land on the Soroksár branch of the Danube for the Student City project.
Delayed: according to the Budapest-Capital Regional Court, the winding-up of the 14 dissolved foundations runs until 31 October, and no itemised, machine-readable asset inventory has appeared so far. On 4 October the Budapest Public Development Council decided to relaunch the Student City project on land recovered from the Fudan foundation, while the finance minister cited the recovery of non-university foundation assets as a deficit-reducing step.
Delayed: no itemised inventory or management rulebook for the recovered foundation assets has appeared, because according to the Budapest-Capital Regional Court the winding-up of the dissolved foundations runs until 31 October. Meanwhile, on 4 October a decision was already taken to use recovered land on the Soroksár branch of the Danube for the Student City project.
Whether a pre-set justification template for urgent procedures without prior notice is adopted within 60 days, recording the grounds for urgency in a form that can be checked afterwards.
Will the Integrity Authority disclose its risk factors, their weighting, category thresholds and the aggregate breakdown by type of office, confirming that sitting ministers and MPs are screened the same way — followed by a quarterly hit rate?
Whether the new president publishes numerical first-year commitments within 60 days of election — how many cases will open, how much property will be frozen, and by what methodology delivery is measured.
Whether the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office publishes its case-selection rules and presents all four initial cases on a standard sheet covering subject, transferring authority, procedural stage, sourced loss estimate, secured assets and reason for selection, without naming anyone not formally suspected.
Will Parliament’s Justice and Constitutional Affairs Committee publish the selection criteria, the number of applicants per post and written reasons for each of the three deputy heads elected to the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH)? Met if all three declare publicly which categories of case and which bodies they will recuse themselves from.
Whether hearing minutes appear within 10 working days of each sitting, with full coverage — the degree of committee publicity is itself a measurement point.
Will the head of the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) issue an instruction requiring that the reason for withdrawing a criminal or law-enforcement executive’s appointment be recorded in writing and published by category within 15 days: restructuring, performance, loss of confidence tied to a specific event, or disciplinary or integrity proceedings?
Whether commissioners publish a quarterly report on the assets and on criminal complaints filed, and whether temporary state ownership in media comes with mandatory management separation and a 12-month exit deadline.
New/outgoing MPs, cabinet members, state secretaries 100% in machine-readable format by end 2026; max 14 days between appointment and upload; NAIH + parliamentary asset declaration portal.
Whether, before the bill is tabled, a public breakdown shows how long each stage of corruption and economic crime cases takes from complaint to final judgment, and how much delay stems from statutory deadlines, capacity shortages or the exercise of defence rights.
Will the Ministry of Transport and Investment (KBM) issue public guidance telling state contracting authorities which discretionary exclusion grounds they apply and what evidence each requires? Met if every exclusion is reasoned in writing with its legal basis, can be challenged before the Public Procurement Arbitration Board, and the self-cleaning route is spelled out.
Whether the register is available as open data, free of charge and without registration, searchable by company registration and tax number, and whether the query is built automatically into bid evaluation in the e-procurement system rather than left to the contracting authority’s diligence.
Will the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) and the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) jointly establish why 12 private equity funds and 9 fund managers are absent from the beneficial-ownership register? Met if it becomes clear whether this is a reporting failure or a register error, and the gaps start being filled.
180-day asset recovery package: unjust enrichment, Criminal Procedure Act § 327 forfeiture, OLAF/EU sanctions channel; relief fund for non-culpable subcontractors.
Whether Parliament passes a single asset-settlement act applying one procedure to every recovered asset: itemised registration with opening and closing values, designated purpose, and an avenue of appeal.
Will the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice publish, for every new power of the National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office (NVVH), including wanted notices and arrest warrants, the enabling statutory provision and the implementing decree section? Met if the map covers every power and any gap it reveals triggers a legislative amendment.
Will the PADME Foundation and the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) announce publicly that they are pursuing a civil-law claim within the criminal proceedings and ask for the suspects’ assets to be sequestered? Met if the motion is filed, which obliges the prosecution service to rule on sequestration.
Will the Integrity Authority, the tax authority, the national asset recovery office, the funding ministries and the prosecution service agree publicly on who refers what to whom and in which order — with post-award audits preceding criminal complaints in subsidy cases?
Whether each transferred public task can be traced to a ring-fenced budget line at the receiving body, and whether that body publishes a first-year delivery plan with numerical indicators within 90 days.
What share of the recovered property stock gets an itemised public inventory within 90 days, and whether a social-rental utilisation balance accompanies it. Without an inventory the assets’ fate cannot be traced.
Whether an itemised list of findings from the review of the 20 August event procurements is published within 15 days of closure, including if no irregularity is found.
Whether a protocol setting out objection and remedy procedures is adopted before the first public risk list — public naming without redress would cost the office its credibility.
Will NAV publish a summary of the internal inquiry the prime minister requested in June into staff roles in the gold convoy affair? Will it name who is now responsible for the criminal directorate’s pending priority cases after the leadership change?
Within 15 days of signature, and by 30 November at the latest, will the government publish the full agreement with its annexes, together with a table of envelopes, programme operators, call dates and accounting deadlines? A follow-up signal is the call schedule and project list appearing by 31 March 2027 on the same national portal as EU funds data, updated every four months.
Whether the amendment extending audit-office and Fiscal Council access to non-public decisions passes within 90 days. Access is worth something only if the oversight body actually uses it.
Whether a machine-readable register launches within 90 days tracking each case through complaint, investigation, indictment, final judgment and assets actually recovered, anonymised before indictment.
Whether legislation passed in the autumn session establishes that the general disclosure duty covers the central bank’s non-monetary operating spend — procurement, property use, advisory mandates — and how wide the exemption list is.
Whether an amendment to the Integrity Authority Act is tabled with tiered triggers: mandatory notification upon suspicion, a reasoned decision by the President of the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) within 30 days of an indictment, and automatic termination upon final conviction. The rule should apply only to events after its entry into force.
Whether the competent parliamentary committee holds a public, minuted session during the autumn sitting at which the President of the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) presents the timetable of the campaign-finance audit and a Government representative sets out its objections in the same forum.
Whether legislation within 90 days confines research grants above HUF 20 million to a dedicated funder — primarily the national research office — awarded by open call, independent peer review, a subcontracting cap and published results.
Will the NVVH adopt public rules on handling DNA profiles, fingerprints and facial images, and seek the opinion of the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (NAIH)? Met if biometric data obtained in criminal cases cannot flow into the office’s administrative inquiries and every query is logged.
Watch whether an independent, public expert audit of return on investment, currency risk and contractor terms is produced within 6 months. Fulfilment: published findings from a body independent of the State Audit Office.
Will the Prime Minister’s Office publish the full text of those among the 3,598 confidential government decisions that concern grants, capital injections, property purchases, loans or asset transfers? Anything kept closed should come with a case-by-case justification and an expiry date; the deadline for the entire stock is 30 September 2027.
Watch whether the defense-ministry contract-review methodology is extended to every ministry and to state firms above HUF 100bn, including the current government’s own contracts. Fulfilled when the reviews close with public summaries.
Whether the single-bid share of state procurement is published quarterly by ministry and value band, with automatic risk flags (repeat winners, tailored specifications).
Whether the authorisation for covert intelligence gathering and coercive measures carries a sunset date with mandatory parliamentary review — extraordinary powers hardening into permanent ones is the main risk.
Whether the final report lists the specific provisions of the central bank act on foundation creation and public-money status, and traces at least 80% of the HUF 393.5bn.
Whether the 2027 budget act requires published written reasoning for every discretionary state-asset decision above HUF 500m — the missing decision trail is what the four investigations have in common.
Whether a written authority verification becomes a precondition for signing state commitments longer than ten years — the criminal complaint over the M6 concession is the symptom, the missing clause the cause.
Will the Ministry of Transport and Investment issue a per-kilometre cost benchmark for suburban rail, metro and railway upgrades, refreshed annually? Met if any winning bid more than 20 percent above the benchmark triggers a published justification and independent expert review.
Will the government table a statutory protocol for urgent purchases made outside normal public procurement: minimum track record, supplier vetting, unit-price comparison, full publication in the e-procurement system within 30 days and a follow-up audit by the Government Audit Office within 12 months, leaving the State Audit Office’s independence intact?
Will Parliament put into statute the rule that authorities neither confirm nor comment on an individual’s risk rating, disclose only concluded findings or criminal referrals, and give the person a chance to explain changes in assets beforehand?
Will the government table a bill that lists exhaustively the grounds on which a government decision may stay confidential, and rules out confidential decisions on individual grants, capital or asset transfers, loans or guarantees? Met only if the ban attaches to the substance of the decision rather than its legal form.
Will Parliament amend the freedom of information act and the service laws of investigative bodies so that rank-and-file investigators’ names are no longer public-interest data, while senior officials’ names remain public? Will intimidation-driven compiling of their personal data become an offence, without limiting their identifiability within proceedings?
Will the first public register of leadership changes at investigative bodies appear, listing each post, the date and legal basis of the decision, the reason category and how the successor was chosen? The government is to publish it for NAV and the police, and the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH) for itself.
Will the government table a bill obliging former ministers and state secretaries to notify any new job for two years, giving an independent body the power to issue binding, publicly reasoned decisions, and imposing fines for breaches?
Whether the Government issues a decree requiring a public options analysis before deciding the fate of each reclaimed property, an open tender wherever a non-state body is to use it, and publication of each decision with reasons within 15 days. Assets under litigation should not be sold or encumbered before a final court ruling.
Will an amendment be tabled by 30 November and passed by year-end requiring supervisory-board approval for any transfer of ownership control or lasting disposal of assets in the 90 days before a leader’s term ends and until the successor takes office? Met if such deals also require notifying the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) and a 15-day waiting period, and the court of registration records a change of owner only with the founding body’s confirmation.
Whether the agricultural subsidy beneficiary register is downloadable and machine-readable before the 2027 application cycle opens — together with beneficial-ownership chains.
Whether, from the 2027 budget year, decision-preparation correspondence must be disclosed retrospectively for state event procurements above HUF 500m, with redactions individually justified.
Whether the uniform disclosure regime takes effect on 1 January: open tabular format, a uniform counterparty identifier, a filled-in amount field for at least 90 per cent of items, within 30 days of signature.
Will a CSV or JSON register of confidential government decisions go live, giving each entry’s number, date, responsible ministry, legal ground for secrecy and status, updated quarterly to cover the current government as well? And will it explain what happened to the 491 numbers missing from the published list?
Will the government require every central subsidy programme above ten billion forints to publish each quarter the share taken by the top 1 percent of contracts and the share awarded by individual decision rather than open call? An external review should be triggered automatically if individual awards exceed a fifth of the budget or the top 1 percent take more than half.
Whether an encrypted, anonymous whistleblower channel with legal protection against retaliation is built (transposing the EU whistleblower directive), and whether the rate of unlawful retaliation against reporters is 0 percent.
MIAK wants a machine-readable, itemised registry within six months, showing TAO, Bethlen Gábor Fund sports payments and media rights fees in one place. A good sign is that funding no longer needs freedom-of-information requests to surface.
Will the prosecution service and the relevant government bodies report how many requests to trace and freeze assets abroad are pending, in how many countries, and the value of assets frozen abroad, without disclosing investigative details? Met if the update is repeated quarterly and assets are frozen abroad within 12 months.
Whether preparation of an Independent Anti-Corruption Bureau begins with pre-set competence boundaries — the bureau investigates, prosecution stays with the prosecution service.
Whether asset transactions appear in machine-readable form within 15 days of the decision with the related-party field completed — the median delay is itself the metric.
Will the NVVH publish, using anonymised case numbers, how many cases one of its leaders stepped back from because of a conflict of interest? Met if the report then appears regularly every quarter.
Will the NVVH publish, without personal data, the number of wanted notices and arrest warrants, the share of people brought before a judge within 72 hours, the number of detention motions and the share granted by the courts, and the number of biometric data requests? Met if the figures are updated quarterly as a time series and set against the same data for other investigating bodies.
Will the foundation publish the state of its portfolio: the value of assets sold and earmarked for sale, the position of the GTC stake and the Swiss Ultima investment, and the sums recovered and still in dispute? Met if the report includes a value-preservation ratio measured against the HUF 266.5 billion founding endowment, is updated every six months, and the ratio does not fall from year to year.
Whether quarterly case-by-case figures appear showing secured assets, indictments and money actually returned, measured against the loss estimate fixed on announcement day. The headline yardstick should be the recovery rate, not case counts or headline sums.
A2 cardinal-law bill submitted within 90 days of the opening session (by 7 August 2026); operational by Q1 2027; HUF 100 bn annual recovered assets initial target; Independent Corruption Investigation Office CPIB-model draft to parliament by 10 August 2026.
Whether legislation is tabled obliging every majority state- or municipally-owned company to publish contracts above HUF 5 million within 30 days in machine-readable form, including beneficial owner, value and procedure type.
Whether the bill tabled opens wholesale to any firm meeting published conditions — excise licence, EU track-and-trace, non-discriminatory supply to retailers — rather than handing it to a new exclusive rights-holder.
Will a government decree require numbered deliverables, item-by-item certification and a stated reason for not using in-house capacity on consultancy and training contracts above HUF 100 million? The certifying official should be different from the one who approves and the one who authorises payment.
Will the state secretariat responsible for sport publish the grant agreements and their amendments along with the club’s final reports, and conclude its post-award audit with a public report?
Will a government decree require open calls in the electronic procurement system, with at least ten working days to bid, for study and consultancy contracts above HUF 5 million net — and require finished studies to go into a searchable public repository within 30 days?
Whether the Ministry of Transport and Investment (KBM) publishes, before the design contract and the EU funding application, the number of dormitory places and rental flats per phase, the rent-cap formula, the allocation rule and the budget by funding source, together with a written cooperation agreement with the capital and District IX.
Will the ministry publish, from Electronic Public Procurement System (EKR) data, the concentration of road and rail construction tenders for 2022–2026: the number of winners, the top five winners’ share and the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index? Met if consortium members and beneficial owners are consolidated in the calculation and quarterly updates follow.
Will register coverage of publicly funded capital funds and their managers reach 100 per cent, up from 73 and 65 per cent respectively? Met if the NAV publishes the completeness rate monthly, together with the names of non-compliant funds and fund managers.
Will the first call require review by at least two independent experts, a decision panel without a ministry majority, public conflict-of-interest declarations from every reviewer and decision-maker, and published decisions with scores and reasons? Implementation should be assessed in the annual review held jointly with the donor countries.
Singapore CPIB model: operational independence, investigative powers, 10-year leadership mandate.
What share of assets blocked by NAV the court ultimately transfers to the budget — the conversion ratio from blocking to actual recovery.
12 months: below 25%, 24 months: below 18%, 36 months: below 15%; AI-based anomaly detector; EU acceptance threshold 10%.
Within one year, share of cases where SAO or KBH proves irregularity min. 60%; below 50% the methodology must be reviewed; state’s success rate in invalidity/nullity actions min. 70%.
Whether the Prosecutor General’s report to Parliament lists the number of immunity requests, offence categories, time from suspicion to filing and Parliament’s decisions, as a time series that can be compared across government and opposition MPs.
Watch whether every municipal procurement contract appears in a machine-readable public database with real-time updates and an AI anomaly detector flagging single-bid tenders and benchmark deviations.
NAV audit; OLAF precedent-based minimum result for the new government’s first year.
World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators; combined effect of EPPO + AMLD + recovery. Interim: 2027 +0.1 (to -0.07), 2028 above +0.15; WGI Control of Corruption +15-20 percentile by 2028.
Whether executive pay at majority state-owned companies appears company by company in machine-readable form: base salary, bonus, benefits in kind, severance and any advisory contract on a separate line — and whether the number and value of exemptions from the pay cap is public.
Whether running concessions gain a public five-yearly value-for-money audit and a linked renegotiation gate that opens automatically once deviation passes a threshold.
Will the state secretariat for sport publish a programme-by-programme table of unsettled corporate-tax-relief (tao) accounts and issue a ruling on every period, either accepting it or ordering repayment? The longer-term benchmark is a statutory 12-month deadline for such decisions.
Will the Prime Minister’s Office compile an inventory of government-commissioned studies from 2018 to 2026, publish those that are not classified, and launch recovery checks where a paid-for study cannot be found?
Will the government table a bill requiring that, during the campaign period, the cost, venue and performers of every state-funded public event are published within 8 days, that unusually high event spending in a constituency is justified publicly, and that ministers or state secretaries running as candidates cannot speak at state events in their own constituency?
Watch whether an annual public rule-of-law audit operates: how many cases were opened, how much pre-trial detention was proportionately justified, and in how many cases courts ultimately convicted or acquitted.
Within 12 months every substantive sports grant should tie to a measurable target indicator, with proportional clawback of unmet funding. A good sign is the clawback existing not just on paper but being applied and documented.
Whether the first systemic report is produced on where state-protected, competition-free rents arise — and whether mandatory tendering becomes the rule for future concessions.
Whether legislation requires that ordering, approving and handing over high-profile police operations happen only in writing, with tamper-proof logging.
Whether Parliament passes a conflict-of-interest law imposing an 18–24 month cooling-off period on ministers and senior officials involved in funding decisions.
Whether the rule stays general and forward-looking — not a retroactive law written for one named person, but a universal conflict-of-interest norm following the 2010 OECD recommendation.
Watch whether, by the August 2027 transition deadline, board and supervisory members are chosen via public tender on verified professional competence rather than political or business trust. Target: 100% of new members on a professional standard.
Whether the tax authority, the national police and the investigative prosecution services publish quarterly, machine-readable procedural statistics on publicly salient cases: openings, suspensions, closures, indictments and duration. None publishes this today.
Whether central-bank contracts appear in the shared, machine-readable public-spending register in the same data structure — not on a separate site in unsearchable form. Measure: what share of contracts above HUF 5m by mid-2027.
Whether a public register of concession and PPP contracts running beyond ten years — with fee formulas, indexation rules and total exposure in present value — exists by the filing of the 2028 budget act.
Watch whether the share of single-bid municipal procedures falls toward mandatory targets (goal: under 15%) and whether “unrealistically low price” disqualifications require detailed public justification.
The proposed KPI targets over 90% of all state sports funding having a public, itemised record sheet by 2027. A good sign is the share rising markedly from today’s state, where data only surfaces via information requests.
Whether individually granted government subsidies receive a mandatory public follow-up audit: were the promised jobs created, and who later took a job at the beneficiary company.
Whether an annual public statement on a consistent methodology covers every state capital injection above HUF 10bn — the HUF 80bn routed into Paks II became a criminal case precisely for want of one.
Will a government decree require public bodies holding more than ten thousand asset items to carry out a full itemised inventory at least every two years, tag assets for machine identification, write off missing items only after a documented inquiry and publish an annual summary? The suggested target is that by the end of 2027 all assets at the public media and other large institutions are counted item by item.
Whether public rules are adopted on the channels and documentation duties governing contact between the government’s political staff and operational police and intelligence chiefs.
Whether a system is created recording who met whom, when and on what matter — with lobbying entries in ministerial and state-secretary diaries made public.
Whether an establishing act gives the Singapore-style anti-corruption body operational independence, its own budget, a multi-year non-revocable leadership mandate and an annual public reporting duty.
Watch whether the share of single-bid procurement falls from about 30% to below 15% within three years, aided by an AI anomaly detector. Fulfilled when the ratio measurably drops under the 15% target.
Whether the statute provides for an independent external performance review at the mid-point of the cycle, assessing case-referral yield and the objection indicator.
Whether the office keeps a contact log of approaches from political and business actors and publishes it annually. It is the one cheap instrument for rebutting suspicions of selective case-opening.
Whether the list of classification grounds becomes exhaustive and every non-public decision gets a mandatory expiry date. If more than half the cases cite national-security interest, the category is being read expansively.
Whether the asset-recovery office publishes the methodology annex behind its HUF 10,000–60,000bn estimate. A threefold spread stays a communications figure until a derivation stands behind it.
Whether the 150-strong staff is recruited on a published, scored set of criteria. The office’s credibility turns on whether it applies to its own hiring the benchmark it demands of others.
Whether quarterly contract publication is written into law or stays a voluntary practice. Proposed benchmark: published contracts covering more than 95 per cent of the operating expenditure lines in the annual accounts by end-2027.
Whether the annual asset-recovery report shows the aggregate value and procedural status of cases touching foreign jurisdictions, plus the number of foreign requests and average response time.
Whether Parliament receives a per-term aggregate statement of the number and financial scale of non-public government decisions. That indicator will show a year from now whether the gap closed.
Whether future concessions and road builds are put out to open, competitive tender (comply-or-explain principle), with a 12-18 month re-measurement of the expected outcome fixed before the contract.
Whether at least three machine cross-checks (property, company, income–wealth gap) are run on every asset declaration, and whether actual investigations follow unexplained wealth growth.
Within 12-18 months, media-rights fees and cross-border sports funding should be decided by pre-set public criteria with grant-based accounting. A good sign is cross-border payments no longer vanishing into items ranging from stationery to pastries.
Whether the public, machine-queryable public-spending database is operational and fully covers cohesion and recovery projects.
Watch whether trustees’ and executives’ asset declarations become available as comparable data rather than PDFs, and whether leadership pay is disclosed.
Monthly PEP reports to NAV (2025 baseline ~30); the 200+ threshold signals actual use of the AML toolkit.
The bill originally promised for end-June was deferred to public consultation on 20 June 2026 (the office’s estimated stand-up: autumn/September). The benchmark: the office’s role must be strictly preparatory-coordinating and bound to judicial approval (NOT a direct power of confiscation).
A good sign is the adoption of a uniform, pre-set conflict-of-interest regime for every publicly funded foundation, including a mandatory cooling-off gap between state and foundation leadership roles.
Fulfilled when corruption-prone areas (procurement, permitting) get mandatory five-year rotation and pre-appointment integrity checks, and a politically independent authority can investigate unexplained wealth. Signal: the corruption-control indicator actually improving.
Whether advances of around 50 percent become conditional on a bank guarantee or performance bond, and whether payment becomes milestone-based against verified delivery.
Whether the ratio of public money paid out to independently surveyed delivered value becomes available in machine-readable, real-time form. This is the most direct efficiency measure of a contract.
Whether state banks’ loans, bonds and guarantees become available at project level on machine-readable sheets: beneficiary, amount, guarantee size, risk rating, performance.
Whether the extended tax-authority powers operate under judicial control, proportionality and purpose limitation, on a machine-readable asset-declaration basis applying equally to everyone.
Whether every state grant decision appears in searchable form at the moment of the decision, with automatic anomaly alerts for unusual timing and conflicted beneficiaries.
Whether an operationally independent bureau on the Singaporean CPIB model is set up, able to investigate any official or politician, under strong legality and parliamentary control.
Whether a bureau independent of government, able to investigate any official or minister, is set up — while coercive measures remain decided by courts.
Whether the founding act sets out the standard of proof, the allocation of the burden of proof, judicial review and the boundary with prosecutorial competence.
Whether from day one the authority publishes the number of pending cases, the value of seized, secured and finally recovered assets, and its own running costs.
Whether the law governing the NVVH mandatorily includes judicial review, property protection, the presumption of innocence and public, machine-readable disclosure of every asset measure.
Whether a statutory, itemised asset freeze replacing the prime-ministerial appeal is created — one that is legally enforceable and open to legal remedy, not merely a political call.
Track whether state-funded foundations publish the grants they receive and how the money is spent in real time, in machine-readable form. A searchable public record is the sign it has been delivered.
Whether the decision-maker settles a private holding in a market he regulates through one of the three accepted forms — a party-neutral standard applying to every government.
Watch whether a public, machine-readable record (beneficiary, amount, procurement, timeline) launches for every EU-funded project, with mandatory cost-benefit analysis and a clawback clause above HUF 500m.
Fulfilled when every leadership change and asset decision rests on documented, individualized grounds and everyone affected has a right to appeal. Hands-on, discretionary restructuring with decisions successfully challenged is the bad sign.
Track whether every EU-funded project launches with a public, machine-readable data sheet (beneficiary, amount, purpose, deadline, procurement, status) and whether the irregularity rate falls. The target is 100% project disclosure.
The 16th amendment enabled reclaiming withdrawn public assets; what share of reclaimed assets is decided by a court (not an administrative/political body), and whether the fate of recovered assets is traceable on a public, itemised data sheet — otherwise the recovery becomes a mirror image of the old discretion.
Whether a mandatory, public lobbying register is introduced (who consulted whom, about what) to make trading in influence transparent; the structural-prevention pillar of the Óbuda (KNYF) investigation wave. Signal: the register’s existence and coverage.
Whether a statutory rule is enacted on removing heads of independent authorities (exhaustive grounds, fixed term, judicial review), and whether the Integrity Authority investigative activity continues even while its president is under indictment.
Whether the irregularity revealed in the tax-authority report (the gold convoy, the prosecutor-general’s procedure) is investigated with independent external control (State Audit Office, and if needed EPPO) under a documented, public procedure — so the high-profile step lands as rule-of-law accountability, not political revenge.
Watch whether the procurement anomaly detector is extended to cultural grants (flagging recurring winner pairs, company-web payments) and decisions appear on machine-readable public data sheets. Fulfilment signal: a working detector and searchable public-fund dashboard.
Watch whether the full loan and contractor agreements are published in structured, machine-readable form (interest, currency, return-on-investment inputs), not just excerpts. Fulfilment: 100% disclosure within 90 days of Chinese sign-off.
Whether real-time, machine-readable disclosure of state companies’ discretionary subsidies and board remuneration is available, and whether 100 percent of public-life asset declarations are in machine-readable, cross-checked format.
Watch whether university asset-management foundations publish, in machine-readable form, managed assets, yields, transferred and withheld sums, and decision rationales (cf. Tokaj-Hegyalja HUF 1.27bn). Target: 100% from the next fiscal year.
Whether a statutory limit covers the period between the election and the new government taking office: above a threshold, no irreversible non-repayable funding decision may be taken.
Whether the evaluation criteria of the two energy calls (HUF 540bn) are public before the application window, and whether every winner gets a public data sheet within 30 days of signing.
Whether the text gains fast-track judicial review of every substantive act of the authority, an annual case-level report to Parliament, and a time limit plus judicial approval for asset supervisors.
Whether a documented methodology for the corruption-loss estimate is published (base, year, margin of error), and what share of the Authority reports become substantive prosecutorial proceedings.
Whether the government tables the two items the report found missing: comprehensive lobbying rules (public register, meeting logs) and revolving-door rules with a cooling-off period.
Whether the authority sets out in advance and in public the tiers of exclusion periods, tied to the gravity of the offence established by final judgment, and publishes self-cleaning decisions — both upholding and removal — with anonymised but substantive reasoning.
Whether the suspension bill put to public consultation also sets the substantive conditions of the legal instrument — pre-published, measurable criteria and mandatory public written reasoning for every individual decision, naming which condition was met or breached.
Whether a short public estimate is produced with four figures: how many dwellings are affected in the 33 suspended projects, how many of these would have been completed in 2027 and 2028, the expected delay in months, and the likely effect on Budapest and suburban house and rental prices.
Whether the recent MÁV chief-landscape-architect notice becomes the minimum standard for every state and state-owned company leadership post: numerically stated eligibility requirements published in advance, a professional justification for the post, and an application deadline closing at least twenty calendar days before the decision.
Whether every refusal of a freedom-of-information request cites the specific statutory provision, the data range concerned and the date until which the restriction applies — a blanket reference to an “ongoing investigation” does not meet this.
Whether the semi-annual report appears with four figures: how many entities are listed and what contract volume stands behind them, in how many procedures it led to an actual exclusion, how many self-cleaning cases were launched and with what outcome, and what share of challenged entries survived.
Whether a machine-readable register is set up covering, retroactively to the instrument’s introduction, the date and legal source of each designation, the investor and its beneficial owner, the procedural privileges used, the project’s status, and the fact and reason of any withdrawal.
Whether a structured, machine-readable summary of every closed state review reaches the public-spending dashboard: contract identifiers and values, the type of finding, the action taken and any amount reclaimed — making visible whether a review had substantive consequences.
Whether the executive’s code of ethics states, in enforceable terms, that claims of guilt built on the substance of a pending investigation may not serve as campaign material. Target: in writing by mid-2027.
If a bill on the Singapore-style bureau is drafted, whether it carries appointment, reporting and review safeguards — a body with strong investigative powers holds exactly the discretion the gold-convoy case exposed.
Whether a rule places the cost of a successful data-access suit on the institution that withheld the data — today refusal carries no real price for the institution, while the applicant must bear the cost and delay of litigation upfront.
Whether the bill accelerating asset recovery proceedings carries an itemised annex that pairs every shortened deadline or simplified step with a named safeguard preserving equality of arms for the defence.
Whether the amendment states that tougher or rights-narrowing provisions do not apply to pending proceedings, and whether it requires investigating authorities and the prosecution service to publish annual case-group-level procedural statistics.
Whether a public plan quantifies the investigator, prosecutor and judge posts needed for economic and corruption cases, the IT cost of handling very large case files and the shortfall in forensic experts.
Whether use of interest-rate equalisation is tied to predefined sectors and policy goals, caps on subsidy content per deal and per beneficiary, and mandatory screening of beneficial owners and links to politically exposed persons.
Whether the bill is amended to require a public, itemised valuation inventory of properties entering 99-year asset management, and to name who bears post-transfer upkeep and renovation costs, with an annual figure.
Whether two independent valuations become mandatory for state asset sales and equipment leases above HUF 100 million, with any deviation beyond ten per cent from their average requiring public written justification.
Whether new or vacated retail licences are awarded on published scoring criteria with applicants’ scores disclosed, free of political vetting, and all contacts logged in the lobbying register.
Whether the act requires the same risk screening, with the same twenty-year look-back, to run on sitting ministers, state secretaries and MPs within the first twelve months as on former officeholders — with a public selection methodology and external oversight.
Whether the act states that the twenty-year look-back only checks tax due under the rules in force at the time, imposes no new obligation and revives no time-barred claim — and whether Parliament requests prior constitutional review before the final vote.
Whether the text ties publication of names to a final, legally binding tax shortfall of at least HUF 5 million — final meaning judicial review concluded — and keeps relatives’ names off every disclosure list.
Whether the ministry commissions an independent assessment of the arbitration scenario — likely award, duration and cost — and makes that figure the public ceiling for any settlement, without demanding a waiver.
Will the cardinal-law bill abolishing the SZTFH carry an annex naming a successor and a start date for each power? Success means not a single day without supervision, pending proceedings and appeal deadlines carrying on uninterrupted, and registers staying accessible throughout.
Will the law prevent supervision from moving to the ministry that is renegotiating concessions in the same sector? Where EU law does not require an independent authority, the test is four safeguards: a fixed-term head, an annual report to Parliament, a searchable register of decisions and a revolving-door ban.
Whether every case takeover comes with a written, reasoned decision and handover record shared with the transferring authority, the injured state body and the defence, and whether the next amendment adds judicial review of the office’s decisions.
Whether Parliament amends the bill so that the person examined may comment on the draft closing document within 15 days, relatives’ bank data may be requested only on established risk with logging audited by the data protection authority (NAIH), the risk criteria are public, and statistics are broken down by government or opposition status.
Will Parliament amend the bill in the detailed debate so that leaders caught by the new incompatibility rule lose office at the end of a uniform grace period, such as six months, and re-elections held after the bill was tabled grant no exemption? Success means both elements are in the text adopted at the final vote.
Before the general debate, will the government publish an impact assessment showing how many organisations reach the 500-athlete threshold, how many more a test of HUF 100 million in annual public support would capture, and how many current leaders the ban affects? It should also examine whether mayors should be covered where their municipality funds the club.
Will the ministry responsible for sport publish, by organisation, by name and in machine-readable form, leaders’ declarations and final integrity exclusions, with the reason, duration and the funding decision behind each? The register should be matchable with subsidy data and list only final decisions.
The headline numbers of the 2027 budget arrived on 19–20 October: a 4.9 per cent deficit target, 2.4 per cent assumed growth and HUF 1,465 billion of spending cuts. The bill itself, however, had still not reached the National Assembly by 25 October. Older points therefore keep slipping, and the new ones mostly test whether the announced items can be counted on: writing the savings into chapter appropriations, a conditional line for concession and migration-fine items, and a ministry-by-ministry stop list. The pension, pay and housing points (indexing linked thresholds, a sectoral pay matrix, the Wekerle Plusz transitional rule) are the spending side of the same question: if the 4.9 per cent target rests on one-off or uncertain revenue, these commitments will be the first to be cut.
Delayed: according to the Ministry of Finance on 5 October, talks with the Banking Association on phasing out the interest rate cap continue without agreement, so the cap stays in place. No targeted programme for the 19,000 vulnerable borrowers has been announced yet.
Delayed: on 19 October the Prime Minister presented the headline figures of the 2027 budget in Parliament (a 4.9 percent deficit target and 2.4 percent growth), and the finance minister set out the spending side on 20 October. The bill had still not been tabled in Parliament by 25 October and is now expected at the end of the month. According to the central bank governor, the Fiscal Council had not formally received it as of 20 October.
Delayed: on 19–20 October the government announced deficit targets of 4.9 percent for 2027 and 2.8 percent for 2030, and on 22 October Fitch projected debt peaking at 77.7 percent of GDP and a 5.4 percent deficit in 2027. A numerical path with an expenditure rule can only be verified once the bill, not yet tabled, is published.
Delayed: the 2027 budget bill had still not been tabled by 25 October. On 20 October the finance minister already counted the end of the migration fine towards the spending cuts, and on 23 October Norwegian funding of nearly 93 billion forints was confirmed. Whether conditional external revenue appears on a separate line will only be clear once the bill is tabled.
Delayed: on 20 October the finance minister outlined 1,465 billion forints of spending cuts, including a cut of at least 10 percent in the operating costs of ministries and state companies, and on 22 October a government decision published in the official gazette ordered a review of major sporting events held in 2022–2025. A public, chapter-by-chapter spending review schedule has still not been published.
Delayed: the 2027 budget bill had still not been tabled by 25 October, so it cannot yet be checked whether it contains a named, modelled drought-damage line. The 2026 amendment promulgated on 21 October created a 500 billion forint Emergency Fund for drought and the energy crisis as a shared envelope, without a separate drought-damage model.
Whether the October medium-term plan names a year for bringing the deficit below 3% and the annual adjustment in percentage points — without a date, raising the target is not an exception but a new baseline.
Does the 2027 budget proposal show allowance auction revenue on its own revenue and expenditure lines, with a pre-set split between industrial decarbonisation and targeted household energy compensation?
Do the Ministry of Finance and the debt management agency publish, alongside monthly fiscal data, the change in the Treasury Single Account broken down by deficit, net forint and FX issuance and EU items, plus the remaining net financing need and a stated buffer target?
Does the medium-term plan due in the second half of October set a numerical baseline and a path to 2030 for GDP per hour worked relative to the V4-plus-Romania average, with productivity-oriented spending items flagged?
Whether the government offers hauliers a time-limited liquidity instrument — state-guaranteed working-capital credit or deferred tax advances — rather than a per-litre price subsidy.
Whether the Government, alongside the 2027 budget bill, adopts a single rule for all blanket price interventions: an exit threshold, a hard sunset date, at least 90 days’ notice and a public impact assessment 60 days before phase-out, with a stricter threshold for any reintroduction.
Will the government attach to the 2027 budget bill a table recording, for each IMF recommendation and the OECD’s tax and pension recommendations, its decision, the reasoning, the fiscal impact and the distributional effect? Met if the annex also includes a financing statement on any external borrowing and the pre-financing needs of EU-funded projects.
Whether at least 90 per cent of the saving appears in the submitted 2027 budget bill as cuts to chapter appropriations, with a measure-by-measure register that flags postponed investment separately. Release of the 300-billion forint reserve should depend on mid-year data, published by 31 July 2027, showing that at least half of the chapter savings have been delivered.
Will the 2027 budget bill due at the end of the month list the HUF 246.1 billion concession saving and the HUF 135 billion migration-fine saving as separate, conditional items? Met if the concession line comes with a multi-year net table covering the termination payment and the cost of taking over operations, and the fine line names in advance how the gap will be covered if the daily penalty has not ended by Q1 2027.
At the baby-loan childbearing deadline extended to 1 November, how many contracts meet the condition and how many families face lump-sum repayment; whether an instalment alternative opens.
By 7 November, will the government announce the launch date of Wekerle Plusz and confirm that the cut-off for the 3 percent rate applies to submitting a complete loan application rather than signing the sale contract? The full rulebook, covering the interest subsidy, price and floor-area caps and eligible co-borrowers, should be out at least 30 days before launch.
Whether the finance ministry and the statistical office assemble a joint calculation module with four inputs — heat-alert days, monthly industrial output, agricultural yields and healthcare load — and publish the calculation method so the estimate can be contested and compared year on year.
Will the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) and the Hungarian State Treasury launch a weekly payment log showing how many recipients were paid, the amounts transferred, pending applications and complaints, and average processing time? Met if the log goes live before the 13 November instalment and at least 95 per cent of payments in the 13 November and 7 December instalments arrive on time.
Whether the annexes to the 2027 budget bill set out, for each public-sector field concerned, headcount, pay envelope, average gross rise, the month it takes effect and its distribution across pay bands. The net effect of the personal income tax (SZJA) cut should appear in a separate column, not folded into the gross figure.
Only a basic-food basket (bread, milk, eggs, margarine, sugar, flour); rest market-priced.
Whether a wage council with government, employers and unions is constituted, and whether it issues its first public annual wage guideline before the 2027 bargaining round.
Whether the enacted statute carries an automatic indexation rule — HUF 120,000 stays a one-off raise if maintaining its value is a political decision taken afresh each year.
Whether the next planning round rules that conditional EU revenue may cover only deferrable expenditure — as cover for commitments creating lasting obligations the proposed target is zero.
Whether the finance ministry publishes by end-November how the HUF 20,000 payment was distributed by income decile, settlement type and access to public transport — derivable from existing tax records without new data collection.
Will the Ministry of Finance publish a machine-readable table splitting the roughly HUF 2,000 billion rise in the expected 2026 deficit into macroeconomic revisions, new government decisions, previously unrecorded items and statistical reclassifications? And will the log then accompany every April and October notification?
Whether the Ministry of Finance publishes, for the third quarter, a breakdown of the change in the deficit into permanent spending cuts, deferred spending, interest costs and revenue, and reconciles the cash-based deficit with the 7.5 percent ESA target.
Whether the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) publishes its national property valuation model and the draft wealth-tax return form, which the impact assessment itself names as preconditions for implementation.
Will the government set up, by resolution, a standing forum of national hauliers’, farmers’ and public-transport associations and the ministries concerned, convened by a pre-set signal rather than by protests, for instance when the average diesel price exceeds its 12-month average by 30 per cent for two consecutive weeks? Met if the forum meets within 72 hours of the trigger and publishes a summary within 48 hours.
Whether public, data-backed qualification criteria and mandatory reasoning appear within 90 days. Proposed target: reasoning attached to 100 per cent of designations issued from 2027.
Before Fitch’s review on 4 December, will the Ministry of Finance publish a one-page summary giving the year the debt ratio turns down, the share of the adjustment backed by identified measures and the size of a locked correction reserve? MIAK’s suggested target is that at least 80 percent of the 2027 adjustment rests on named measures.
Whether a uniform review protocol — criteria, independent valuation and an exit-cost estimate — is produced within 90 days. Without it the net balance of termination — annual saving minus compensation, procedural and transitional operating costs — cannot be computed.
Whether a public formula for differentiating the 13th and 14th month pension appears before the 2027 budget debate — an announcement that not everyone gets the same is unpredictable without one.
Whether a detailed, public account of how the flawed income and poverty indicators arose is published by end-2026, and whether the flawed data are withdrawn from the Eurostat database by then.
3 MNB + 3 PM + 3 independent economists (two-thirds parliament vote); quarterly convergence report; deficit path 2026: 4.5-5.0%, 2027: 3.5-4.0%, 2028: below 3.0%.
Whether the framework reform is accompanied by an explicit, simultaneous amendment of Article 44 — otherwise statutory and constitutional rules diverge and create legal uncertainty.
Whether each spending item notified under the escape clause receives a sunset date in domestic law — expiring automatically absent a fresh decision, by end-2028 at the latest. Target: 100% from 2027.
Whether the four documents are public before the debate on rates opens, starting with a valuation methodology built on a mass appraisal model — a base derived from actual transaction data rather than case-by-case estimates, and not left to a later implementing decree.
Whether a conditional rate path with an uncertainty band is published quarterly from Q4 2026, and whether the bank releases an annual accuracy record for its one-year inflation forecast.
How much of the fund is left at year end, and does no more than 20 per cent of its use fall in the last six weeks of the year? A late-December surge would show the fund was run as a leftover pot rather than a crisis reserve.
Will a list appear of all investment and grant commitments based on government resolutions with no payments for at least 24 months, followed by a reasoned decision on each item by 31 March 2027? Cancelling them should not be booked as a cash saving.
Before the regional BKK launches on 1 January, will its founding document and an indexed, at least three-year 50:50 funding contract be made public? Do they include a deadlock-breaking rule, a consultation right for suburban municipalities and a minimum service standard?
Whether the promulgated regulations require the income thresholds of the old-age allowance, the minimum orphan and widow pensions and the disability base amount to rise each year together with pensions from 2028. A good sign would be a built-in review every two years of the minimum pension relative to the poverty line.
Whether the explanatory memorandum shows how many companies are affected, how many fall under the global minimum tax and the extra revenue net of the top-up tax it replaces. The other half is a decree, by the end of 2026, setting measurable conditions for the targeted development tax allowance, with every allowance granted published company by company.
Will the implementing rules specify how much of the HUF 150 billion in direct sports funding is distributed by a formula based on membership and results, and how much through open calls? Met if the rules also set out the role of independent assessors and conflict-of-interest safeguards, and a separate closing procedure settles the accounts of facilities built from the former tao corporate-tax allowance.
Will the government write payment deadlines into the decrees that set up crisis support, and table a matching amendment in Parliament for support established by statute? Met if, whenever the state misses a deadline, recipients automatically receive late-payment interest at the rate the tax authority charges, a rule extended to all future fuel relief for hauliers and farmers.
Progressive (0.5%/1%/1.5%) wealth tax on net assets above HUF 500 M takes effect; NAV-led machine-readable asset register; top 1% supplying at least 80% of revenue.
HUF 18 M annual revenue cap; max 50% from one client; NAV revision audit; kata employment-test methodology by 1 September 2026.
Whether a rule takes effect so that, if annual food inflation exceeds 8 percent for three consecutive months, the bottom income quintile automatically receives a food supplement from the next quarter rather than the margin cap returning. Benchmark: at least 75 percent of payments should reach the target group.
Whether the metro extension and every element of the HUF 400bn concession package receive a public cost-benefit analysis (expected ridership, unit cost, alternatives).
Government investment as a share of GDP (Eurostat ESA10) above 5.5% by Q1 2027.
Whether a regular public series tracks the gap between Hungary’s price level and wage level relative to the EU average — price convergence alone does not show where catch-up actually stands.
Is a rule adopted whereby outage costs from risks already recorded in official documents are borne by the company and its owner, while unforeseeable costs go only to a named budget line and never into universal service prices?
Will the Ministry of Finance publish an inventory of all tax expenditures, showing for each item the annual revenue forgone, the number of beneficiaries and the split by income decile? Met if the inventory then becomes a standing annex to every budget bill.
Will the Ministry of Finance set up a spending review unit and publish its first report on two areas, giving each programme’s cost, objective, measured results and an exit scenario? Met if the proposed savings feed into the planning of the 2028 budget.
Will the medium-term plan include an adverse oil-price scenario with a pre-set order of spending cuts, and a safeguard that slows the adjustment if unemployment stays above 5.0 percent for three months running? The first public review, with an opinion from the Fiscal Council, should come by the end of March.
Will a public inventory show how many municipal rental flats are let, how many stand empty or uninhabitable and what it would cost to renovate them, with a standard data sheet and central funding for municipalities? A second signal is whether the first Wekerle rental housing call gives priority to renovating empty flats, judged by cost and time per flat ready to move into.
EUROMOD-based microsimulation impact assessment (NAV+KSH data join) of HUF 50 000/month universal child transfer; bottom three income deciles access ≥95% (vs. <50% for doubled family allowance).
Hungarian sovereign yield spread vs. Czech-Polish: from 200-250 bp → below 100 bp; 10-year HU-DE yield spread min. 80 bp lower within one year; CDS spread -30 bp by 2028.
Will the Ministry of Finance publish the extra excise revenue from tobacco alongside the health spending it funds, benchmarked against a pre-set health spending path without the tax rise? If the windfall merely replaces existing funding, the pledge is not met.
Will every ministry and state-owned company publish which activities it is ending or scaling back, and how much of its share of the savings each one delivers? Met if at least 70 per cent of the HUF 447 billion operating saving is tied to named tasks rather than simply to posts left vacant.
Will the Hungarian State Treasury (MÁK), using bank data, publish the first anonymised quarterly figures broken down by age, income decile, county, settlement type and new or second-hand home? A public review after 12 months should then assess the gap between the 3 and 5 percent rates and the age limit of 41.
Whether the savings from the stronger forint and lower spreads go to debt and deficit reduction rather than new spending; KPI: the 10-year government-bond spread stays durably low versus German and regional peers (amid the S&P negative outlook and the excessive-deficit procedure).
Whether the 2027 budget bill shows the full cost of the energy-price subsidy on a single named line, as a share of GDP and by energy carrier. Success means the Central Statistical Office (KSH), working with the Hungarian National Bank (MNB), publishes by 31 May 2027 the first quarterly, machine-readable indicator showing how consumer prices would differ at market energy prices.
Watch whether the government commissions a public energy-sector rent audit mapping which regulatory features generate rents for whom. Fulfilled when the findings reach parliament to underpin a rules-based windfall-tax mechanism.
Is there a published estimate, by income and age group, of the retirement savings lost through the HUF 105 billion paid out in 2025, using the 6.4 per cent 20-year median return?
Whether the rate cap ends by 30 June 2027 at the latest, or earlier once three-month BUBOR averages below 5 percent for three months, with a payment ceiling, free term extension and free switch to fixed rates for some 19,000 vulnerable borrowers in place beforehand. Benchmark: their 90-day arrears rate should not exceed the portfolio average by more than 2 points.
Whether the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) introduces a debt-to-income limit, a maximum maturity and an interest-rate stress test, calibrated so that only a small share of new loans is affected for now, with quarterly central bank data on new mortgages relative to income.
Whether the Ministry of Finance medium-term plan commits to bringing the deficit below 3 per cent by 2029 at the latest, with at least two-thirds of the adjustment done by the end of 2028. The second half is met if Parliament enacts a rule that, in the 12 months before the 2030 election, any lasting spending increase or tax cut must name an equal offset, with a public opinion from the Fiscal Council.
Whether the Ministry of Finance, the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) and the Central Statistical Office (KSH) publish a first official report on the total tax and contribution burden by decile and for the top 1 per cent, including capital-income allowances and a breakdown by family type. It should then be annexed to every budget bill, with anonymised data open to researchers.
Whether the Government publishes a timetable for disability benefit recipients under 65 who are left out of the bracketed catch-up: how many people it concerns, how much money is involved and in what steps they can catch up. It should also taper the increase as earnings rise, so that taking up work never triggers a sudden loss of income.
Whether a zero-base review of larger budget items, working on the principle of organised discontinuation, is launched, with a mandatory re-measurement within 18 months for items above HUF 50 bn (Drucker audit).
From the 2026 ~6.8% state; fiscal consolidation path.
Will the government table, and Parliament pass, a law requiring the Ministry of Finance to publish, no later than 60 days before an election, a report on the rolling deficit, the expected annual deficit and debt, unbudgeted commitments and conditional EU revenue? Will the Fiscal Council add a public opinion within 15 days?
Will the state road operator Magyar Közút publish full-cost unit prices for its in-house works alongside the average price of comparable public tenders? Met if the construction unit keeps separate accounts, and any work whose in-house cost persistently exceeds the market price by more than 10 per cent goes back to open tender.
Whether the 2027 amendment also mandates that the allowance rise each 1 January by at least the previous year’s consumer price index, with suspension possible only by a separate, reasoned act.
New municipal/state social rental units registered on the housing data platform (EP2) annually; Otthon Start supply expansion instead of demand stimulation.
Previous cycle’s utilisation rate: ~75% — that is the reference.
Whether revenue lines not backed by contract get a conditional flag by the detailed debate. Without it the deficit path cannot be checked, because it is invisible how much is planning and how much is hope.
Whether a mandatory checklist is introduced for every state investment above HUF 20bn: ex-ante cost-benefit analysis, traffic or demand forecast, options appraisal. Proposed target: 100 per cent by 2028.
Whether the successor model’s competition rules are fixed before termination is declared. With no model ready, the concession is simply replaced by another equally opaque construction.
The recovery rate on the state’s claim and the settlement rate of subcontractor claims will show whether the intervention was worth it. If the state becomes an owner instead of a creditor, the risk shifts to the budget.
Whether the multi-year funding path is published, with annual review. With a one-off budget line, the pay scale’s second year becomes the risk, not its first.
Whether it is fixed in advance when the strategic designation ends, and whether an assessment follows twelve months after the composition closes. The average duration of designations signals the risk of getting stuck.
Whether a single pay schedule covering every public-service sector appears by the time the 2027 budget bill is filed, with per-sector target pay, target dates and named funding. It needs a separate line for the job categories left out of earlier career-path raises.
Whether lawmakers set a pre-announced indexation formula for public-service pay that replaces annual ad hoc bargaining. A bad sign if raises stay announcement-driven.
Whether actual traffic is measured against the forecast in the third year after opening, and whether the HUF 76bn can be traced item by item into road-renewal projects, naming the road sections. Proposed target: 100 per cent in the first two years.
Whether the aggregate actual cost of the sign replacement (est. ~HUF 50 M), stamps and IT systems is disclosed, and how far it deviates from the prior estimate (target: ±15 percent).
Whether firms whose working capital rests on guaranteed credit get a published, uniform transition period, and whether a mandatory 12–18-month ex-post review of rejected applications and SME credit stock follows.
Watch whether EU funds are tied to measurable green and digital targets, whether expected versus actual results are compared after 12-18 months, and whether a clawback mechanism applies to underperforming projects.
Whether the irregularity rate of EU-funded projects falls towards the 0.5% Estonian benchmark, and whether a machine-readable public spending database is operational.
Watch whether a public platform mapping permits, developments and rental stock by settlement is set up, and whether issued building permits and completed new homes rise meaningfully.
Fulfilled if the one-off audit becomes a real-time, public, machine-readable budget (open data standard) that also exposes revenue assumptions. Signal: the count of later-discovered hidden outlays falling to zero.
Partial → medium → full phase-out; targeted housing loan support for the bottom 30%.
Whether a public error log is available that records the origin, detection and correction of every data error, and whether the turnaround time of corrections, from detection to fix, falls.
Every new/expanded benefit (back-to-school, pensioner support, pensioner SZÉP card, income-tax relief) gets an itemised, public funding disclosure on the public-money map; the savings from the public-sector pay cut as a separate, trackable item.
Whether the August back-to-school benefit gets an income/life-situation targeting filter, while eligibility remains automatic (without separate application) for the poorest households.
Track whether the freed-up fiscal space goes toward cutting the debt path and rebuilding buffers rather than new permanent spending, and whether the primary balance improves.
A good sign is a pre-announced, multi-step schedule for phasing out special taxes with a mandatory impact assessment before each step. Quietly introducing a new special tax mid-year is a bad sign.
A good sign is a primary balance (excluding interest) improving each year as a share of GDP, with debt-to-GDP turning downward and no new permanent spending commitments. A sudden procyclical austerity package is the bad sign.
Fulfilled when a ceiling on the FX-debt share of total public debt is announced and the spread on subsequent issuances narrows versus the current midswap +80 / +125 bps. Signal: machine-readable disclosure of every issuance’s terms.
Fulfilled when breaching a statutory debt threshold triggers an automatic, pre-announced spending cap and an independent fiscal institution vets revenue plans in advance. Signal: uncollectable revenue can no longer enter the budget.
Fulfilled once an annual public debt-sustainability report is published and an automatic fiscal brake tied to a debt/GDP threshold takes effect. Signal: a published, numeric threshold plus an early-warning system.
Mid-city house-price index monthly change vs. KSH inflation; the overheating risk gauge of the Otthon Start program.
Signal of improving market confidence; falling budget financing cost.
Whether scoring every tax against Adam Smith’s four maxims (certainty, convenience, economy, proportionality) becomes routine, with the worst performers publicly identified.
Whether the GDP-proportionate deficit (currently above 8% without EU funds) falls to the target path without cutting essential services, and whether a realistic euro-accession timetable emerges.
Whether an annual public debt report, an early-warning system and an automatic fiscal brake tied to a debt threshold are introduced, balanced by a counter-cyclical stabiliser.
Whether a multi-year numerical expenditure rule, an annual Debt Sustainability Report and an automatic consolidation trigger above a debt threshold are introduced.
Whether a minimum share (8–10%) of the plan’s annual spending is reserved for cycling networks and feeder or branch-line development — often the most cost-effective investments.
Whether every institution gets its own small procurement and maintenance budget, and whether operating cost cover is ring-fenced from staff pay — in both directions.
Whether the 2% GDP growth committed by the PM is achieved within one year, per KSH quarterly data.
Watch whether the country absorbs at least 95% of the opened EU envelope by the relevant deadlines under the n+3 rule, without losing funds. Fulfilled when the absorption rate reaches 95%.
Whether a proportionate, itemised implementation impact assessment and public cost estimate (affected signs, stamps, IT systems, real price, lead time) is produced concurrently with the legislative amendment restoring the county name.
Whether income-tested compensation starts alongside the first phase-out stage, indexed automatically to the statistical office’s cost-of-living data rather than set by discretionary decision.
Whether the margin cap ends product group by product group, each stage carrying a sunset date fixed in law — the first stage covering groups where actual margins stayed persistently below the regulatory cap.
A good sign is half of MFB’s governing board being independent experts with fixed mandates, a public balance sheet, an independent audit, and parliament holding genuine oversight of the bank’s EU-fund management.
Watch whether the central bank actively deploys loan-to-value and debt-service caps alongside rate cuts and launches a quarterly public housing overvaluation index by region. Falling overvaluation from ~22.5% signals progress.
Watch whether the government refrains from overt or covert pressure on the rate path and stops claiming credit for the favourable inflation turn. The Monetary Council deciding on its own is the marker.
Whether the announced public review takes place, and whether the order of rail development is decided by passenger-traffic / passenger-km data rather than political bargaining.
Whether, before the first disbursement round, the most disadvantaged districts get free grant/project-management mentoring and a pre-financing bridge, so funds do not get stuck in better-off regions.
Watch whether foreign reserves stay at a level satisfying the Guidotti-Greenspan rule, covering at least the external debt maturing within a year. Fulfilled if reserves do not fall below that threshold from their record high.
Watch whether the debt-to-GDP path is stable or falling, within the sub-70% band targeted by the sustainability framework. Fulfilled if the debt ratio durably trends toward that band.
Watch whether a targeted, income-proportional and automatic energy-price compensation framework emerges instead of a universal price cap. Fulfilment: codification of a time-limited, targeted support mechanism.
Whether the introduced wealth tax is built with a high threshold, a moderate (non-confiscatory) rate and pre-set rules; how many constitutional/legal objections arise, and whether actual revenue approaches the planned figure — the precondition for the structural wealth tax’s constitutional durability.
Whether the government publishes, in machine-readable settlement-level form, where each forint of the released funds goes, and whether every large project has a pre-set, accountable target indicator.
Whether export promotion shifts towards higher value-added sectors serving several independent markets — so no single country’s tariff decision can tip the system.
Quarterly substantive progress reported on the unfrozen EUR 16.4bn envelope (projects approaching contracting, actual disbursement, bottlenecks), with a real-time, machine-readable public interface (beneficiary, amount, procurement ID, drawdown status). Risk: the government itself flagged that ~HUF 800 bn of support was lost earlier — whether a recurrence can be structurally ruled out.
Whether a public, machine-readable analysis is produced of which sectors, with what revenue and how many jobs, depend on the affected export chains — kept separate from the competition case.
Public, run by NAV’s independent research unit — precondition of the funding debate.
Whether, in exchange for losing its veto, the council gains a statutorily protected budget line, its own analytical staff, access to ministry models and a comply-or-explain duty on government.
Whether the government publishes the distribution of instalment increases across the 216,000 affected contracts by income decile, loan-size band and maturity (a distribution, not an average) before the final vote.
Whether the government publishes an itemised assessment: how many taxpayers are affected, what the five-year revenue effect is, and what administrative burden ends or arises.
Whether the ministry publishes the ranking score and underlying calculation for every project above HUF 50bn, explaining deviations on a comply-or-explain basis.
Watch whether an annually refreshed public euro-readiness scorecard is produced, quantifying Hungary’s convergence across four dimensions: HICP inflation, deficit and debt path, and exchange-rate and interest-rate stability. Fulfilled when the first edition appears with figures in every dimension.
Whether state investment incentives are tied to measurable commitments (local-supplier share, R&D content, export integration, net employment), time-limited, with an annual public review and clawback on non-performance — drawing on the lesson of the battery-industry exposure (the halted CATL expansion).
Whether every sectoral levy must have a tax base tied to an external market indicator, a statutory sunset date and an annual public review.
Whether targeted, income-scaled compensation with clear eligibility rules replaces the universal price cap, while prices stay at real market levels.
Whether the risk chapter of the next budget bill contains a separate, quantified heat-impact item — the revenue shortfall and extra spending a summer like this year’s could cause, and with what probability — and whether the Fiscal Council’s opinion addresses it separately.
Whether the protocol is produced, mapping per-litre price thresholds to measures in four columns: which instrument activates, how long it stays in force with a mandatory sunset date, its monthly cost to the budget, and the source of funding — the fourth column is exactly what the Polish case lacked.
Whether every bill amending the budget act is accompanied by a public impact note of at most two pages: which appropriations change and by how much, the effect on the annual deficit and the debt path, and the commitment that justifies the amendment.
Whether the government publishes the non-confidential summary of its application at the moment of filing — not after the Council decides: which measures, at what amount, against what energy-security output indicator, for which year.
Whether, within 12 months of launch, the take-up rate, total budget cost, distribution across income deciles and effect on diesel consumption are published.
Will the government publish, within 30 days of the amended budget act being promulgated, the trigger thresholds for the HUF 500 billion fund and a cap on what a single decision can reallocate? The sign of delivery: every payout disclosed in machine-readable form, by beneficiary and legal basis.
Whether the government publishes, alongside the 2027 budget bill promised for late October, itemised costings for both universal doubling and a targeted first step covering low-income, single-parent and large families.
If the subsidy continues into 2027, whether eligibility switches from the current engine-power threshold to household income combined with local public-transport access.
Whether the full text is published at signature: amount and legal basis, dated schedule, the capital’s quantified commitments, control points with reporting duties, and the consequence of non-performance.
Whether the solidarity levy’s rate and formula are fixed in advance over at least a three-year horizon, with mid-year changes taking effect only from the following budget year.
Whether the amendment ends the offsetting of concession fees against gambling tax, and publishes the fee formula, the underlying revenue data and the amounts actually paid each year.
Whether the 2027 budget bill itemises multi-year contractual commitments — the omitted HUF 176 billion availability fee showed that a commitments register alone is useless if the budget may depart from it.
Whether the government publishes a year-by-year path from 1.31 to above 2 per cent of GDP in R&D spending, separating the expected public-sector and business contributions and attaching output indicators to each.
Whether the government sets a four-indicator annual benchmark (applications, success rate, Hungarian-led projects, funding won per researcher) against a 2021-2026 baseline, and earmarks money for Seal of Excellence proposals, bid preparation and matching funds.
Will the government attach to the budget bill a single machine-readable table listing every revenue and spending measure above HUF 10 billion, with its balance effect, legal basis and a microsimulated breakdown by income decile? Met if the Fiscal Council reviews it and an updated version appears before the final vote.
Will the Ministry of Finance attach a machine-readable annex showing how much 2027-28 interest spending would rise if yields stayed 50 or 100 basis points higher, and how much debt matures or reprices within 12 and 24 months? It should be updated quarterly and reviewed by the Fiscal Council.
Will the explanatory memorandum show, for each monthly payment tier, how much pensionable service and benefit base full-time, side-job and retired KATA taxpayers earn compared with a minimum-wage employee — and place the anti-disguised-employment rule on the client side?
Will the government attach to the budget bill a single assessment covering net wealth-tax revenue, revenue lost through the KATA expansion, the net balance and the change in long-term pension liabilities — with target values set in advance and checked publicly after 18 months?
Will the finance minister appoint the supervisor through a public mandate that limits the remit to the commitments in the agreement, requires two-way quarterly reports to the government and the City Assembly, and expires by the end of 2028 at the latest? Will those reports also track whether the government is meeting its own commitments?
Before the bill reaches Parliament, will three years of gross and net parking revenue for all 23 districts be published, along with a pre-set allocation formula for the road fund and a three-year, tapering transitional compensation for districts?
Will the government attach a machine-readable table listing every new commitment above HUF 20 billion with its 2027 cost, 2028-2030 impact, named funding source, number of people affected and decision status — and will the Fiscal Council review it before the final vote?
Whether the explanatory memorandum of the 2027 budget bill includes a dedicated table on reclaimed KEKVA assets: book and market value, one-off versus lasting budget effects, and their treatment under EU statistical rules. A good sign would be the Fiscal Council addressing it in its opinion.
Whether the Fiscal Council publishes its own 2027–2030 deficit and debt path, stating in which year the deficit could fall below 3 percent, with risk scenarios for a yield shock and for the end of the tax exemption on retail government bonds, and whether the Government replies point by point.
Whether the Ministry of Finance publishes, on the day of submission, a typed summary of comments, the list of respondents and a point-by-point change log, with separate written reasoning on the three most contested issues: valuation of unlisted holdings, the order of property valuation methods and liquidity for SME owners.
Whether the Government attaches impact assessments with no blank mandatory fields to the bills: annual revenue breakdown, the assumptions behind the estimate, compliance and National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) enforcement costs in forints, and expected KATA entrants by group.
If the government borrows separately to pre-finance EU projects, will the Ministry of Finance and the Government Debt Management Agency (ÁKK) publish before signing the rationale, the full interest cost, a repayment schedule tied to EU reimbursements, the effect on the debt ratio and the full text of any conditions? The relevant parliamentary committee should also be briefed.
Whether the Ministry of Finance publishes the number of people in each of the six increase brackets, broken down by county and district, together with a 2027–2030 cost path that covers not only the minimum-pension package but also the 14th-month pension scenarios.
Whether the budget law requires the Government to table offsetting measures within 60 days whenever the quarterly Ministry of Finance forecast puts the deficit more than 0.3 per cent of GDP above target, with a public Fiscal Council opinion. It should come with an annex showing how the deficit moves if growth, inflation or yields deviate by 1 percentage point.
Will the government define a narrow, task-based set of critical posts in tax and consumer-protection inspection and at customer-service points that are exempt from the hiring freeze? Met if occupancy is published quarterly and the number of filled posts does not fall below the end-2026 level during 2027.
Will the first call of the local communities programme area reserve at least 40 percent of the envelope for applicants in the most disadvantaged districts, pay small municipalities and NGOs at least half of their grant in advance, and offer free help with applications? Success means quarterly implementation reports and the 40 percent share actually reached by the end of 2027.
Both overdue energy security points were missed. Neither the final report on the Danube emergency response nor the diesel supply stress test appeared, even though Ukrainian drones may have hit a key Russian station on the Druzhba pipeline on 20 October. The fortnightly winter preparedness report is therefore the last chance for supply-side transparency before the heating season. The home renovation and battery storage points hold the demand side to the same standard: without measured savings, a means-tested band and a controllability condition, the HUF 600 billion envelope risks becoming another unverifiable subsidy rather than an investment that cuts consumption.
Whether a submission-ready timetable with dated milestones is produced: when and at what capacity alternative routes come online, by how much the Russian source share falls each quarter, and which authority certifies the figure.
Is the plan annexed to the 2027 budget proposal, built on a severe Red Sea disruption scenario, with a single table showing what the year’s energy shocks cost and who paid: the state company, the budget or consumers?
Will a draft decree on heating temperatures in bodies under government control, with exemptions for health and education, go to public consultation — while street lighting, a local-government responsibility, is addressed only through a voluntary grant scheme in the 2027 budget bill?
Whether the next energy strategy contains a standalone storage target in gigawatt-hours and a separate figure for contracted demand-side flexibility, both expressed as a share of the prevailing evening peak load.
Whether a public regional simultaneity calculation is produced showing what happens to the Hungarian evening peak when a heatwave hits every neighbouring system at once — replacing today’s tacit assumption of spare capacity next door.
6-month orderly phase-out with monthly price steps, targeted compensation (bottom 2 income deciles HUF 5-12 000/month + professional sector); GVH+MEKH joint HHI-based market concentration monitoring.
Before asking Washington to extend the exemption, will the government publish the tested capacity of the Adriatic route, the refinery switchover schedule, a quarterly path for the Russian share of crude imports to the end of 2027 and the body that will certify the figures? Success means the request rests on that path rather than on the US-Russia diesel deal.
Will the minister for the economy and energy publish the first winter preparedness report and update it every two weeks until 31 March 2027? Met if it covers all five data sets, gas storage levels and contracted supply, heating costs by income decile, diesel and crude stocks in days, use of the Emergency (Havária) Fund and the status of crisis triggers, in plain language and machine-readable form.
The government + MOL phased non-Russian crude conversion schedule (CPC-Blend / brent / Libyan-Algerian), with 60-day accelerated environmental permitting; EUR 250-450 M CAPEX; framework talks within 6 months.
Temporary, SAO-audited Druzhba-conversion price cap (max 18 months) + targeted heating support (~HUF 30k/month, 200k households, ~HUF 30 bn/year); phase-out 31 March 2028.
Whether the government publishes a volume and price forecast for the refill still to come before the heating season: how much gas is missing against the fill target, at what expected price, and the total volume and average price of positions already hedged.
Whether the Ministry of Finance publishes a refinery-war branch of the energy price shock plan: a diesel crack-spread trigger with a public methodology, a separate scenario for another Druzhba pipeline outage, and a targeted, time-limited reserve for haulage, agriculture and intercity transport rather than a general price cap.
Will the amended conditions require, for applications already approved, a standard remotely controllable control unit and a smart meter, with voluntary, paid participation in grid balancing? A further signal is the ministry publishing how many applications are still pending and the order for the next round, giving priority to households that join grid balancing.
Whether the 2027 legislative package carries the threshold, formula and sunset date for automatic industrial energy-cost relief — replacing the shifting terms of after-the-fact, case-by-case rescue packages.
Whether both operators agree in writing by year-end on the test protocol — load level, duration, crude grades, winter and summer operation, measurement points — with an independent expert accepted by both sides overseeing it.
Will a pre-agreed plan be in place to replace southern inflows via the TurkStream route through interconnections with Austria, Slovakia, Romania and Croatia if they are cut off?
Will the government adopt a public resolution distinguishing domestic supply disruptions, coordinated IEA actions and purely domestic price management — allowing the last only above a fixed diesel-cover threshold — with a refill deadline and cost estimate attached to every release?
Will the government revise the baseline of its energy-price shock preparedness plan so that it no longer counts on surplus Russian diesel staying on world markets, and instead assumes further EU curbs on Russian oil revenues? Met if the scenario puts numbers on the reserve requirement and the cost.
Will the home renovation call require an independent energy certificate before and after the works, tie payment of the grant to the post-renovation certificate and track actual consumption for two years with household consent? The next signal is a first annual report at the end of 2027 comparing certified and measured savings and the cost per kilowatt-hour saved.
Whether an automatic, flat payment for the bottom two income quintiles, based on tax-authority data and paid twice a year with a hardship route, is launched. Benchmark: at least 75 percent of the money should reach the target group.
Will the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV) publish its first aggregated report on the countries of origin of diesel imports, the number of checks and the irregularities found? Met if the report is updated quarterly, allowing a comparison of the periods before and after the US deadline of 7 April 2027.
Whether a public, numeric exit-scenario summary is produced on four items: sums already paid, sums recoverable under contract, penalty value, and the replacement capacity needed by 2035.
Whether the annual capacity booked at the Croatian and Greek terminals, the weighted average price and the remaining term are published — replacing the storage-fill percentage, which the current European situation shows is not the decisive factor. Route concentration is measured too.
Whether the security-of-supply report and the grid development plan carry a numeric operating boundary: at what Danube flow and level every unit remains operable without riverbed intervention, and at which level derating or shutdown becomes mandatory.
Whether a Hungarian–Croatian framework covering supply only is concluded — long-term capacity booking, priority delivery if Druzhba fails, a public transit-fee method, time-bound expert dispute resolution — explicitly excluding the INA ownership dispute.
Binary indicator: did the cap (and de facto price accord) end on 9 May 2027, or was it extended? Fuel market HHI below 2500 by end 2027.
Whether the government moves to attach a sunset date or a public review date, with annual assessment, to the exemption for Russian crude via the Druzhba pipeline — open-ended since 2022.
Is there a legal basis for the mechanism that, once the energy price index exceeds its 12-month average by 30 per cent, pays automatic support within 48 hours to households in the bottom 40 per cent income band, funded from the allowance revenue line?
Will a report show how many batteries from the scheme are actually running, with what power and storage capacity, and what share of them helps balance the grid in the evening peak? The announced 285 MW is only a lower-bound estimate based on the smallest eligible unit, so the real figure is the test of the scheme’s value to the power system.
Whether an exposure audit is produced for every river-cooled plant, and whether cooling towers, renegotiated thermal limits and partial capacity replacement are compared in an open cost-benefit analysis.
Measured at MOL refinery input; 2025 baseline: ~60%.
The released 575 million litre refill schedule over 24 months; 90-day import equivalent reached.
The Russian crude import share falls from the 2025 ~58% to ≤25% by 2028 (28 pp); based on MEKH time series and JANAF capacity reporting.
Long-term diversification target; depends on LNG infrastructure capacity.
Whether an average saving figure backed by sampled measurement is available for closed renovation programmes before the next call. Without it the new call repeats the same blindness to impact.
Fulfilled when a pre-defined price-shock threshold is set that automatically triggers targeted, temporary compensation without discretion. Signal: a published threshold and a built-in phase-out rule.
Whether time-of-use tariffs become available on an opt-in basis to every smart-metered household, with mandatory extension only after measured effects — smart meters currently cover 11 percent of households.
Whether capacity planning includes an annually reviewed water-scarcity scenario in three bands (normal year, prolonged drought, extreme drought with heat), with numerical assumptions for nuclear, renewable, gas and import capacity.
Whether a mandatory annual public security-of-supply stress test enters law with at least three scenarios (heatwave without Paks, low import capacity, prolonged low wind) and a duty to report to Parliament.
Whether the competition authority runs continuous public margin monitoring, and whether price regulation squeezes out small operators — does the number of independent stations fall.
Whether the electrifiable transport segments (urban public transport, short-range fleets) are electrified on schedule without harming supply security.
Fulfilled when the emergency gas reserve reaches at least 90 days of consumption. Signal: published reserve-level data staying consistently above the threshold.
A good sign is a falling share for the single largest supplier in energy imports alongside a rising domestic renewables share. Continued reliance on one source and one route is the bad sign.
Watch whether the EUR 1.5bn grid upgrade and HUF 480bn integration programme are scheduled in step with the wind tenders, and whether energy-storage capacity is built alongside.
Whether the government states, on adopting the legislative programme, that wholesale market structure and residential price regulation will reach Parliament in separate bills on separate timetables.
Whether every subprogramme above HUF 50bn gets a published forecast check before signature, drawing on the actual cost and schedule data of comparable completed domestic and European projects, with the gap explained in writing.
Whether a data-governance framework appears before the rollout wave: at what granularity (15, 30 or 60 minutes) consumption is recorded, how long it is stored, who may access it and for what purposes.
Whether the government publicly itemises the strategic reserve (target: a 90-day gas reserve), and whether consumer compensation can be activated within 48 hours of a price spike.
Following Rosatom’s 5 June 2026 letter, whether the government decides on continuation/modification on the basis of a pre-fixed, public, four-factor criteria set (lifetime cost, supplier dependency, supply security, climate-target fit), and whether it makes the findings of the independent due diligence public (except for classified business/national-security data).
As a condition of the unfrozen EUR 16.4bn, the EU asks for the phase-out of the utility cuts / price cap (including the protected fuel price). MIAK benchmark: whether, instead of the general price cap, an income-proportionate transfer targeted to the lowest income deciles and a phased phase-out timetable with pre-announced expiry dates is created. Indicator: energy-support spending as a share of GDP, on a falling path.
Whether a pre-drafted mechanism is prepared that activates only above a defined threshold — targeted help instead of universal price support, with a mandatory expiry date.
Whether energy-storage capacity grows enough to cover the summer demand peak with a reserve, so that an output drop like the Paks curtailment does not create a supply risk.
Watch whether annual storage expansion reaches the proposed 200-500 MW band so the evening cooling peak (duck curve) can be managed via storage. Fulfilment: measurable yearly growth from the current ~50 MW.
Whether the Paks cooling package is extended with an equally detailed plan for the temperature limit: continuously updated publication of measured Danube temperature at the gauge, the monthly output loss in megawatts caused by the limit, and a cost comparison of deeper water intake, a cooling tower and keeping the status quo.
Whether every investment or lifetime-extension decision on a water-cooled plant above 300 MW will require a public, quantified water-availability forecast to the end of the planned lifetime, across several climate scenarios, naming the flow threshold below which the plant cannot operate.
Whether the decision is published together with a precise definition of who qualifies, a per-recipient cap, and automatic payment based on linked state registers without a separate application.
Whether the legislation sets a calendar expiry date plus publicly reasoned reviews 30 days after the Százhalombatta refinery returns to full capacity and at the end of the heating season.
Whether the state shareholder moves at MOL’s general meeting for a separate disclosure of the profit from the Russian crude discount and the estimated extra cost of switching to seaborne crude.
Whether the government sets a public numerical ceiling on the annual share of gas and oil imported from any single country, and applies it identically to every proposal — from a Hungarian governing party or a German opposition one alike.
Will the government table an amendment, effective 1 May 2027, limiting the regulated price to a single metering point at a primary residence, adding a middle tier above average consumption, and quantifying the savings and the number of households affected?
Will households in the bottom two income deciles get a higher grant share and a smaller loan, and will at least a quarter of the annual envelope go to buildings with the worst energy rating? Alongside the budget bill, the government should publish how the HUF 600 billion is split by year, by funding source and between grants and loans.
After the public media overhaul, frequency policy also changed course this week. On 19 October the Media Council apologised to Klubrádió and announced a new Budapest frequency tender, yet the media freedom framework law has still not reached the National Assembly. The sequence mirrors the public media CEO tender: individual redress comes before the general rule, so the framework law’s delay is not a formality. Until statutory guarantees exist, every new tender and appointment depends on the goodwill of whoever holds the majority on the regulatory board.
Delayed: on 19 October the Media Council apologised to Klubrádió and announced a new Budapest frequency tender, and on 20 October the Prime Minister announced a 61.3 billion forint cut in state funding for public media. The media freedom framework law has still not been put before Parliament.
Delayed: on 7 October two governing-party MPs tabled resolutions to set up two new public media companies, with ownership rights exercised by the Independent Public Media Board. The board launched the tender for a chief executive on 13 October, and Parliament began debating the founding documents on 14 October. A balanced board composition based on several nominating bodies has not yet been settled.
Whether a public appointment rulebook is adopted for news leadership posts: mandatory publication of the call and a minimum deadline, publication of the professional programme, and a fixed composition for the selection panel.
The budget commissioner’s appointment must not erode the NMHH’s autonomous status; the legal basis should be clean and EMFA-compliant — otherwise an EU media-freedom risk (the NMHH itself disputes the legality of the appointment).
Whether grounds for dismissing executives are fixed within 90 days, with mandatory written reasoning. Proposed target: public reasoning naming a ground for 100 per cent of dismissals.
Watch whether political ads non-compliant with the new media law (hate-inciting, dignity-violating) are removed by year-end. Fulfilment signal: the actual dismantling of banned ad carriers by the deadline.
Fulfilled when MTVA’s full budget and production contracts are public in machine-readable form and news editing is bound by a balance-of-coverage code. Signal: an independent media monitor measuring editorial neutrality.
Whether 2026 baseline values are recorded for source diversity and the mix of voices given airtime, so the first 2027 comparison is measurable — the relaunch of the news programme being the most easily reversible step.
Whether the Government tables an amendment to the National Security Services Act requiring prior court approval and a three-part necessity test for any attempt to identify a source, including methods that currently need no external sign-off, with retroactive approval within 72 hours in emergencies.
Whether Parliament’s National Security Committee establishes whether data were gathered to identify a source, who ordered it and on what legal basis, and publishes its conclusion without classified detail.
Whether the Government tables a bill handing ownership rights to a collegial asset manager, requiring a time-bound exit plan for each such company, and safeguarding archives and employee rights.
Whether the Media Council publishes the sampling plan and codebook before the first measurement, then the raw coded data in machine-readable form, using two independent coding teams with inter-coder agreement of at least 0.8. Benchmark: at least one independent re-analysis by end-2027 within 5 percentage points.
Whether ministries start quarterly reporting on the number of information requests received, granted and refused and the average handling time, and whether a fast, time-bound review route opens at the data-protection authority ahead of the court stage — so that plainly unfounded refusals do not turn into years of litigation.
Whether a rule holds that by end-2027 no single ownership group reaches 15% of external production spend — and whether a quarterly, machine-readable production procurement register exists, naming ultimate beneficial owners.
Whether a quarterly advertising register starts with the 2027 budget year, and whether the combined share of the three largest recipients of state advertising spend falls. The direction matters, not the absolute value.
Whether rules take effect obliging the service to notify the journalist, the newsroom and anyone whose data was gathered within 12 months, allowing delays only by court order, and giving those affected a route to court to have unlawfully collected data erased.
Whether a new, open nomination round involving professional bodies is held for the two empty seats, and whether the media law reserves at least a third of seats for opposition nominees, with professional delegates proposing candidates if deadlock persists.
Whether the ministry exercising ownership rights issues a written, reasoned decision to close, sell or move the outlet into a public-service framework, having first requested and published the Media Council’s opinion on media pluralism.
Measurable after the framework bill is implemented.
High → medium-low; annual EU measurement.
Independent editorial board on at least 4 channels (government, parliamentary opposition, MTA, civil umbrella); RSF Press Freedom Index +20 places by 2029 vs. 2025 reference.
Whether the committee’s report shows, per service, how many source-tracing warrants were sought, granted and refused, and how many notifications were deferred. A near-zero refusal rate would suggest judicial oversight has become a rubber stamp.
Watch whether funding arrives via a law-fixed, GDP-proportional automatic formula and whether quarterly public impartiality metrics appear (uncut airtime, source diversity). Fulfilment: independently maintained metrics from Q1 2027.
Whether the first public, indicator-level Hungarian media-pluralism report appears — built on the Media Pluralism Monitor’s indicator structure with domestic adaptation — and whether its methodology is public.
Whether the Media Council sets up a register tracing ownership to the ultimate natural person, linked to company-register data, and publishes a first annual report with concentration indices by segment and a breakdown of state advertising spend by outlet.
Whether any competent authority makes disclosure of the funding source and ultimate beneficial owners a condition of clearance — and when. Without it the EMFA media-pluralism test stays formal.
How many of the six seats are filled by the time the board is constituted. The governing majority has signalled it can be constituted without opposition nominees — a short-handed start is the first test of the institutional guarantees. Proposed target: full complement within six months.
Whether a statutory ban is adopted excluding the use of state funds to acquire media businesses. The measure of ownership transparency is how many providers meet machine-readable ownership disclosure.
Whether an annual, public, segment-by-segment media-concentration (HHI) measurement is launched; whether the TV market’s HHI falls below 2500 within three years, and whether at least five independent national newsrooms operate — the pluralism benchmark after the Mediaworks wind-down (closure of Bors, Ripost, Metropol).
Whether the next media law amendment fixes two limits: a news leadership mandate may be revoked only with written, published reasons and only on a pre-defined ground.
Watch whether the final public-media leader is chosen by broad parliamentary consensus (opposition veto or qualified majority), with a diverse board on cycle-independent mandates. Fulfilment: a documented process with opposition participation.
Watch whether the interim leadership’s limited powers are publicly itemized: no contracts longer than one year, no mass layoffs, no restructuring of newsrooms. Fulfilment signal: zero irreversible decisions during the transition.
Whether the public-media budget is set for several years ahead by an objective formula fixed in law (ruling out funding withdrawal as a pressure tool), with a mandatory public impact assessment — the financial guarantee of editorial autonomy.
Watch whether the nine-member Board’s political-professional ratio becomes balanced, members are elected by a two-thirds majority, and conflict-of-interest screening is mandatory. Fulfilment signal: the end of the 6:3 political majority.
Whether the planned 180–190-person layoff at Mediaworks runs as a fair collective procedure under the Labour Code, with statutory severance and retraining support, separated from the political dispute.
Whether the Press Fund is allocated by a pre-set, objective, public formula and a reasoned application process, with a mandatory published beneficiary list — so allocation cannot become a lever of pressure.
Whether the statute establishes that content instructions may be given only in writing, with an identifiable sender and a registered file number, that acting on an oral request is a breach, and that a complaint route exists outside the newsroom. Target: 100% written in the first full year.
Whether statute fixes objective, pre-published criteria for the nominating professional organisations, a two-thirds confirmation of professional nominees, and terms offset from the parliamentary cycle — or whether it stays mere practice.
Whether Parliament amends the media act so that choosing the CEO, the editorial charter, the annual plan and asset sales require two-thirds of filled seats plus at least one member from each nominating group, with an anti-boycott fallback.
The cluster’s two cases — winding up the public-interest asset management foundations and restructuring the HUN-REN research network — coincide at one point: the reorganisation has begun while the powers of the interim leadership are nowhere fixed. A statutory minimum of researcher self-governance, and explicit limits on the interim presidency — no institute mergers, asset disposals or long-term commitments, and a fixed end date — would supply exactly the guarantees whose absence already had visible consequences in the foundation wind-down. The start of the academic year closed that pattern badly: teaching began, but not smoothly, after the termination of the Education Office and Déryné Programme contracts, the replacement of the film academy’s board, and this week the closure of the House of Terror.
The new defence points link the domestic side of hybrid threats to allied commitments. The sabotage of Starlink antennas showed that protecting ground infrastructure and preventing recruitment by hostile services are two sides of the same gap: there is no joint analysis cell to treat scattered incidents as a pattern. The Hungarian priorities to be set in NATO’s Political Guidance and an analytical contribution to the Black Sea situational picture test whether Hungary’s role becomes a written, accountable commitment or remains a series of ad hoc statements.
Delayed: on 25 September a European Commission spokesperson said that under Hungary’s updated plan the country will take EUR 5.4 billion in SAFE loans instead of the roughly EUR 16 billion planned earlier. The decision has therefore been made, but no public Hungarian document comparing the SAFE loan with alternative financing in figures has appeared.
Whether an itemised list is produced of the critical enabler capabilities (air-to-air refuelling, strategic lift, ISR, missile defence, precision munitions) where planning rests wholly on allied assets — with columns for European alternative, cost and lead time.
Whether the Ministry of Transport and Investment (KBM) issues its first exposure report on Hungarian Danube freight moving through Romanian ports, the war-risk shipping insurance premium and a preset threshold above which rail and road rerouting is triggered, followed by monthly machine-readable updates.
Whether the Government commissions the National Security Authority responsible for classified information to review 2022–2026: who had access to EU and NATO classified material in the foreign ministry and at the top of government, and how that access was logged.
In a joint submission by the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will the government state in writing that Hungary backs the joint command on three conditions, and offer a concrete contribution? If that contribution counts as a deployment of the Hungarian Defence Forces, the government’s report to Parliament should set out the mission, headcount, cost and exit conditions.
Whether the Government decides, on a joint proposal from the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Hungary’s contribution to NATO’s Black Sea situational picture: analysts, unmanned reconnaissance assets and shared air-picture data. Success means an unclassified summary of headcount, duration and cost, or an explanation of why nothing was offered.
Will the Ministry of Defence publish a yardstick for SAFE-funded projects covering NATO capability targets, interoperability, joint procurement, EU and domestic value added, and lifetime cost? Met if every project sheet is public before the loan agreement is signed and is discussed by Parliament’s defence committee.
Whether a mandatory risk-based access and aircraft-securing standard for all public landing sites appears within 90 days — scrambling a Gripen after a stolen Cessna is the costliest answer to a cheaply closable gap.
After the 29 May 2026 Russian drone strike on Galați (Romania, a NATO member), whether a formalised Hungarian–Romanian joint alert and airspace-monitoring cooperation is established; KPI: whether it operates (yes/no) and the reaction time in a border incident.
Whether the Ministry of Defence publishes an unclassified summary of the priorities Hungary pursues in the negotiations on NATO’s Political Guidance, including European intelligence and early-warning capability, the south-eastern flank and the future of the Kosovo Force (KFOR) contribution. The defence committee of the National Assembly should receive a full briefing in closed session.
Whether it is set down in writing within 90 days who may speak about a hybrid incident on Hungarian territory and at what evidentiary threshold, and whether it is tested annually in a simulation exercise.
Whether the police crime-prevention service launches a warning campaign aimed at young adults, schools and parents about paid ‘small jobs’ that turn out to be sabotage, together with an anonymous reporting channel. Success means quarterly figures on reports received and on the investigations they lead to.
Pentagon monthly data; if it falls below 25k by year-end 2026, the 20-25k withdrawal scenario is operationalising — Hungarian doctrine escalation trigger.
Watch whether the defense ministry’s parliamentary state secretary delivers the review report on all 2022-2026 procurement and ministry contracts tied to the arms-development program. Fulfilled when the report is completed on schedule.
Whether the airspace-policing escalation ladder is put in writing and annual figures show what share of incidents closed at the lowest rung — that ratio, not the raw number of scrambles, shows the system’s maturity.
Will the Ministry of Defence compile an inventory of its pre-2026 consultancy contracts by value, deliverables and acceptance records? Where national security prevents disclosure, the reason for classification should be public and the relevant parliamentary committee should review the content in closed session.
Will a joint submission by the defence minister and the minister responsible for digitalisation produce an inventory of which communication and positioning services used by the Hungarian Defence Forces and critical infrastructure depend on a single non-European provider? Success means a public summary of how many systems are affected and when they will be replaced, plus a full closed-session briefing for the relevant parliamentary committees.
Whether a plain-language summary appears on the detection threshold, who decides on scrambling jets and on weapon use, and when and through what channel the public is informed.
Whether the Government sets down in writing how the police, the civilian national security services, the Military National Security Service and the Hungarian Defence Forces divide tasks when sabotage is suspected, and sets up a joint group that cross-checks cases. Fulfilment includes named contact points for Europol and Eurojust.
Whether a Hungarian firm appears as supplier or subcontractor in at least one SAFE joint procurement contract within 60 days of the second call opening.
Whether the screening of airports and high-voltage substations is completed within 180 days, with a cost estimate for missing capabilities. For detection-to-intervention time the relevant order of magnitude is minutes, not hours.
Whether a facility-type responsibility matrix is enacted in law — not in internal rules — naming the primary detector, the primary responder, who may order neutralisation, and the threshold at which a case passes to the other agency; treating military, civilian-critical and mixed sites separately.
Whether an annual public report shows what share of defence procurement went to domestic manufacturers — Poland’s 90% is an upper reference, not a target, but without a metric the debate runs without numbers.
Will a register with common categories be set up for airspace violations, drone sightings, sabotage and major cyberattacks, published quarterly in delayed, aggregated form? Telecoms, energy and rail operators should be required to include physical sabotage in their risk assessments.
Will a government decree require two independent specialist valuations, a public justification for any sale below their average, disclosure of a state intermediary’s mark-up and publication of sale details within 30 days — with classified elements reported to the relevant parliamentary committee?
Will the Ministry of Defence publish an unclassified paper setting out the selection criteria for counter-drone procurement, the expected unit cost of the laser weapon compared with existing air-defence systems, the share of domestic suppliers and which elements could be bought or developed jointly with EU partners?
Whether an unclassified public summary of the review appears after the detailed findings have gone to the National Assembly’s National Security Committee in closed session. The review is not a criminal procedure; any suspected offence is for the investigating authorities and the prosecution service to pursue.
Whether an inter-ministerial geostrategic analytical unit with semi-annual situation assessments is created, and whether a pre-developed, scenario-based crisis-management protocol (energy-price shock, refugee wave, regional escalation) is produced — so that Hungarian foreign policy becomes predictive and procedurally documented rather than reactive.
Whether a public, machine-readable database of restricted zones around critical facilities exists by mid-2027, in a form flight-planning applications and onboard devices can ingest.
Munitions + air defence + counter-drone on a joint regional (V4+RO+HR) procurement platform; EDF Hungarian drawdown 2026-2030 cycle at least EUR 600 m; 30-50% unit-cost reduction.
Whether a standardised quarterly report starts on events affecting Hungarian and neighbouring allied airspace: date, nature, response, attribution and the outcome of closed investigations.
Track whether defence spending climbs toward 2.5% of GDP by 2027 on the proposed multi-year, pre-set path rather than as a yearly political bargaining chip.
Full drone-detection/airspace-monitoring coverage of the critical eastern border sections within 24 months, ideally within a joint European (HV4) procurement framework — the border-defence benchmark after drone strikes on NATO members.
A public Defence Budget Dashboard; the publicly accessible share of the budget rising from ~30% to above 70% (procurement contracts, NATO capability targets made visible); productive-investment share above 40%.
Per NATO-standard annual report; given Pentagon-documented arms shortages, the upper band is more realistic; Poland’s 4.7% reference point.
Share of domestic production in Hungarian defence procurement; 2026 baseline reviewed and locked; defence R&D 12-15% of total R&D by 2030.
A good sign is the domestic R&D and manufacturing share of defence spending growth reaching 40%, meaning the money flows into home-grown development and jobs rather than pure imports.
Whether a risk analysis with a clear legal basis and independent oversight is prepared on where the Russian and Chinese ties of post-2010 senior officials carry knowledge-transfer or influence risk.
Whether a defence spending path expressed as a share of GDP enters law with measurable annual capability targets — 2.5 percent by 2027, 3.5 percent by 2030, with at least 40 percent of the increment going to productive domestic investment.
Whether from the 2027 report the alliance credibility audit carries four figures: share of capability targets met, average procurement lead time, critical stock fill rate, and the share of joint European procurement in total purchasing.
Watch whether Hungary’s vetoes and blockages in joint EU and NATO decisions decline, and whether Hungary stays a reliable, predictable ally on the decisive questions.
Whether the defence contribution (drone financing, NATO 2%) is decoupled from the national position taken on other issues — that is, does not appear as a package deal that erodes alliance credibility.
Whether an aggregate public report on domestic hybrid incidents appears: case numbers by type (airspace, cyber, sabotage, influence), the sectors affected, the average time from detection to notification, and the state of attribution — without operational detail or data from ongoing investigations.
Whether an eligibility framework is published for service heads and their deputies: minimum professional experience in years and field, verifiable management experience, completion of security vetting and conflict-of-interest screening before nomination, and the procedural order of submissions.
Will the Military National Security Service and the defence ministry publish a plain-language annual threat assessment using probability categories, with a checklist for citizens? Alongside it, a nationwide public alert drill should be held with the interior ministry’s disaster management service.
In response to the Romanian and Bulgarian requests, will the government make a concrete, public offer, such as training, intelligence data or opening its domestic test range for joint development? It is worth tracking whether the offer is delivered by mid-2027.
Both overdue water management points were missed. Almost two months past its deadline there is still no daily water balance dashboard, and the permit file for the Paks riverbed sill has not been published. The two gaps are linked: without a water balance it cannot be verified whether the sill serves water retention or merely cooling for the nuclear plant. Until the tender for the head of the General Directorate of Water Management and the winter operating regime set measurable targets, the next drought will again catch the system in emergency mode.
Realistically available irrigation water at 2026 autumn sowing min. 120k ha (current 100k); 5k farmers relief channel within 6 months.
Whether a single-methodology balance is published for five sectors — agriculture, energy, logistics, drinking water and industry — with losses quantified in forint and an uncertainty range, in one comparable table.
Will the call for the head of the General Directorate of Water Management (OVF) set at least three quantified targets, name a selection panel that includes an outside expert, and commit to publishing the winning candidate’s plan? It is also worth tracking whether the new head publishes a mandate programme within 60 days of appointment.
Whether a public task map appears showing who currently measures and models what across the water directorate, the research network, university faculties and the national laboratory — and whether scattered time series enter a single catalogue.
Will the water authority launch a register listing, within 72 hours, every dredging, riverbed works or extraordinary water abstraction ordered on emergency grounds? Met if each entry carries a written justification of necessity and time limit, and an ex-post impact assessment follows within 90 days.
50 ha+ mandatory base insurance (drought, frost, hail) + state catastrophe-risk pool (within 180 days); insurance penetration to 75% by 2028 (current 40%).
Whether a machine-readable joint data sheet is set up publishing daily discharge, water level and temperature at least at the Nagybajcs, Budapest, Paks and Mohács gauges, a quarterly sediment balance, in a uniform format with a downloadable historical series.
Paid amount / reported damage claims ratio min. 60% within 6 months; below 40% the implementation capacity must be reconsidered.
Whether the water authority publishes pre-set levels stating which user groups take priority in a scarcity period and at which measured water-level or flow threshold each restriction takes effect.
Will the government adopt an automatic relief rule triggered by an objective district-level harvest threshold, with a public formula and a cap, conditional on water-retention investment or crop insurance? A sign of delivery is first payments reaching farmers by 31 January 2027.
Will each district water directorate publish which sluices, canal sections and reservoirs it is switching to water retention, with a target volume for each facility? The regime should also set in advance the water levels at which water must still be released to prevent inland flooding.
Will the ministry responsible for agriculture put the two Water Premium calls out for public consultation by 30 November, so that applications open on 1 March 2027 and part of the payment is linked to the water actually retained? If Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) rules rule this out, the ministry should say so publicly and name a domestically funded interim scheme.
With Commission approval, reallocation of min. 25% of Hungary’s EUR 2.5 bn CAP Pillar II (~EUR 625 m) to climate adaptation priority. CAP climate-adaptation utilisation rate: 2026: 15%, 2027: 20%, 2030: 30%.
Whether the hail-suppression operating log and rainfall data for the same periods appear in one place in downloadable form — replacing the two opposing press-statement claims now standing over whether operation and drought are linked.
Whether the water directorates publish valid industrial abstraction permits in a single register: permit holder, location and source of abstraction, licensed annual and daily volumes, and any restriction condition — the register prohibits nothing, it only makes visible.
Whether the whole damage-claim process runs through the agricultural data platform, and whether the platform publishes anonymous municipality-level aggregates: hectares affected, damage assessed and amounts actually paid — available by mid-2027.
Track whether a uniform, pre-published heat-alert action plan is drafted within six months, tying accountable measures to HungaroMet’s alert levels, with its first live season next summer.
Whether the rail development programme’s planning documentation includes a dedicated chapter on how many train paths can be added at short notice on the main freight corridors, where the bottlenecks are, and what maintenance scheduling preserves that reserve during the summer months.
Whether an impact protocol for the hail-suppression system appears before the 2027 hail season — comparing the four counties still covered with those switched off, a natural experiment the current decision created by accident.
Whether the 133-station drought and water-scarcity monitoring network receives the protection status due to critical assets, with a physical-security minimum and on-site signage explaining what each device measures. Measure: stations operating at season start, and vandalism cases.
Will every water directorate report how much water it held back over the winter against its target, in million cubic metres? Groundwater levels and reservoir storage at the end of March, compared with a year earlier, are worth tracking alongside it.
Sectoral (agriculture, water, health, construction, energy) action tables with deadlines/owners; monthly public climate dashboard; annual Climate Adaptation Report to parliament (UK Climate Change Act 2008 model).
Will the first report reach Parliament covering flows at critical Danube and Tisza gauging points, groundwater and key lake levels, water abstraction, the Paks cooling-water margin and a forint estimate of drought-related yield losses?
Will the water administration adopt, after public consultation, a catalogue of typical low-water interventions backed by a strategic environmental assessment and a Natura 2000 appraisal? Met if each intervention type comes with a section-by-section sensitivity map, a list of no-go sites and a restoration obligation.
Whether the government takes an express decision before the next low-water season on whether the stone sill built into the riverbed is temporary or permanent — with an exit criterion or a full impact-assessment duty, and cross-border consultation.
Will the first drought-risk report appear, putting numbers on how a severe harvest failure would hit growth, tax revenue, farm exports and relief spending? The next step is a drought module in a domestic climate-economy model by the end of 2027.
Whether a pre-agreed drought protocol is adopted: distribution rules, a priority order (drinking water, irrigation, industry) and graduated restriction thresholds — instead of decisions taken mid-crisis.
Whether river, lake and groundwater stock data become available on a single machine-readable platform, together with drought-monitoring indicators and aggregate abstraction-permit data.
Whether a municipality-level — in cities district-level — map is produced of heat-island intensity, social exposure and local health capacity, with weekly excess-mortality reporting by age group.
Whether a regularly updated map launches combining satellite vegetation data, soil-moisture measurements and reported damage on one platform — this is what makes relief targeted.
VAT Act amendment + 60 small reservoirs + 200k ha water-conserving tillage (no-till, mulch, cover crop); target: irrigated area ~100k ha → +80-120k ha by end 2027.
Watch whether community self-governed management of watershed regions (Tisza system, Lake Velence catchment) launches in 5 pilot regions by 2027, with transparent rules, monitoring and graduated sanctions.
Whether at least five self-governing catchment-level irrigation communities form with working local rules, and whether development funds are allocated against drought-damage data.
Whether drought-tolerant varieties and water-efficient, data-driven farming spread, and whether the domestic integrated climate-economy model delivers sector-level damage estimates.
From current 100k ha to 250k ha; reservoir expansion along Tisza and Hortobágy; precision irrigation for <50 ha farms.
MG1 program point (1000 soil-sensor stations) scheduled build-out; real-time public API + Drought dashboard. 300 stations by end 2026, 700 by end 2027, 1000 by end 2028.
Currently ~1500 wells → 3000 with real-time public data; target: share of wells below 2022 historical minimum ~22% → <10% by 2030.
A good sign is the climate act due this year carrying binding, deadline-bound, annually accountable adaptation targets rather than vague principles, paired with a working drought-damage insurance scheme.
Whether a three-tier alert system tied to the meteorological service’s thresholds is created with a pre-defined package of measures, and whether cooling of schools, hospitals, nurseries and care homes begins.
Watch whether a real water-retention system starts building from the next budget year: restored streams and reservoirs, channel reconstruction, and a rising number of catchment regions covered.
Whether a tier-by-tier mandatory, quantified, cross-sector action package (health, schools, workplaces, transport) is produced with a public real-time data interface, replacing ad hoc prime-ministerial announcements with a pre-published rule set.
Whether the HUF 3.6 billion hospital climate retrofit continues through the announced 2027-2029 programme’s scheduled, accountable steps, and whether the number of rail sections under heat-related speed restrictions falls.
Whether each of the three alert levels triggers an automatic statutory package — outdoor work rules, institutional procedures, water distribution, transport cooling — with normative state funding.
Whether the campaign effect is built into durable feedback: whether water bills start showing a comparison with similar households, and whether utilities publish their annual network-loss trend.
Whether the support system’s centre of gravity shifts: water-retaining agronomy as a condition of area payments, simplified irrigation licensing with abstraction caps, and index-based insurance products.
Watch whether each heat-alert tier gets a pre-defined, numeric cross-sector action package (hospital reserve capacity, work schedules, active outreach to vulnerable groups). Fulfilment signal: a public, real-time, auditable data interface.
Whether above-threshold abstraction applications must obtain the centre’s published written opinion, with a duty to give reasons for departing from it — and whether the centre publishes the hit rate of its own past forecasts.
Whether a per-municipality water-security index appears from four public data points: network loss ratio, reserve capacity relative to daily peak demand, water-base type and exposure, and restriction days over the past three years.
Whether the founding act carries an itemised annex on compulsory publication — daily water-level and temperature series, the register of abstraction permits, the restriction list, a national drought index — in a fixed format.
Whether every water-management plan above HUF 10bn — including rescue plans such as the Lake Velence one — is placed in a public, version-controlled repository.
Whether the water service starts annual, uniformly measured and cross-section-published monitoring of riverbed incision on the main river reaches, and whether an intervention plan with cost and impact estimates follows.
Watch whether real-time public data on water pressure, reserve levels and quality becomes available for every municipality on a single national platform. Growing data coverage signals fulfilment.
Whether Hungary initiates a binding prior notification and consultation procedure among the Danube states ahead of any riverbed intervention that durably alters water sharing.
Whether a public ex-post assessment answers four questions: did the gauge stay above the minus 90 cm level; what did the works cost item by item against the HUF 6bn order of magnitude announced; is there a measurable environmental effect diverging from the Natura 2000 review’s forecast; and how much lost generation was avoided — including the accounting of the HUF 6.2bn drought-relief fund.
When the bill goes to Parliament, will the government publish a summary of every comment received, stating whether it was accepted and, if not, why not?
Health reform advanced this week through pay policy. On 19 October an average 17 per cent pay rise for health professionals was announced, and on 24–25 October the health minister outlined the 2027 pay settlement. Both overdue points are delayed because the wage figures are arriving before the reform bill and before a purpose-by-purpose plan for the extra HUF 500 billion. If pay is decoupled from the financing reform, most of the extra money will be absorbed by running costs, leaving no measurable envelope for value-based financing.
In industrial safety, the polluter-pays principle now gets enforcement-side points: a public register of environmental fines, an annual enforcement report and a remediation budget line funded from fines collected. They pair with the earlier points on financial guarantees and orphan contamination: guarantees cover future damage, while fines only deter if they are actually collected and their use is visible. The missed register of legacy pollution sites shows that, for now, neither leg operates in public.
The committee investigating the clemency case opened with the threat of coercive measures, and that is exactly what makes this cluster’s points interdependent: a hearing held without procedural guarantees makes its own findings contestable, and contestable findings never turn into a protocol that can be raised to statutory level. The annual anonymised report is the third step, and it holds the cluster’s only backward-looking indicator: how often the final decision departs from the professional recommendation, and how many of those departures carry a separate explanation. That is the number measuring the structural cause of the 2023 case, not its cast.
The new employment points target the gap between the minimum wage bargain and the labour market’s real condition: unemployment fell to 4.6 per cent in September, but behind a headline that also counts public works and people working abroad, the primary labour market employs 22,000 fewer people than a year ago. If the metric for the 2027 minimum wage target is not set in writing in the tripartite forum, and collective redundancies are not reported monthly, the wage deal will rest on a distorted headline number. The wage compression indicator and the sectoral pay matrix ask the same question from the top of the pay scale: whether raising the guaranteed minimum for skilled workers devalues graduate pay in relative terms.
The outage of the magyarorszag.hu government portal exposed in operations the same gap that the acceptance testing of the electronic land registry exposed in development: there is no public inventory of state systems’ dependencies and vulnerabilities, and no mandatory patching deadline. The software inventory, a government decree on patching deadlines and protection of citizens’ procedural deadlines together decide whether the cost of an outage falls on the state or on the user. The spectrum and space infrastructure points extend the same exposure logic to critical services run by private companies.
The trilateral talks have slipped to after 10 November and the planned meeting between Péter Magyar and Volodymyr Zelensky did not take place, so the two central foreign policy points are delayed. The new points would fill the gap before the next round: a public statement rejecting any deal made without Ukraine, Hungary’s conditions for the mandate of a European chief negotiator, and a report to the National Assembly after each round. If these are not in place before talks resume, the government’s position will again only become visible after the fact, adjusted to a deal already made.
Delayed: the deadline for the doctrine document is tied to the tabling of the 2027 budget. The Prime Minister presented the budget’s headline figures on 19 October, but the bill had still not been tabled by 25 October and is expected at the end of the month. No foreign policy doctrine document has been published so far.
Delayed: on 12 October the Foreign Affairs Council approved, with no Hungarian veto and no link to any other file, the largest expansion yet of the Russia sanctions list, covering more than 1,600 people and entities. The next sanctions package itself was not adopted on schedule, however; according to foreign press on 18 October the EU is still working on it.
Delayed: the planned meeting between Péter Magyar and Zelensky did not take place, so no joint statement was issued. On 20 October the Ukrainian ambassador said a Hungarian–Ukrainian summit is expected before the end of the year.
Delayed: on 21 October Putin agreed in principle to resume the trilateral talks after 10 November, with the Kremlin proposing Abu Dhabi as the venue. By 25 October no public Hungarian negotiating position on guarantees or sanctions relief had been published.
Will the government declare, before Serbia’s parliamentary vote, that no Hungarian minister will appear with a Serbian candidate at campaign events and that any political inauguration of the Budapest–Belgrade railway will wait until the elections are over? Met if there is no joint campaign appearance until the presidential result is announced.
Will the Ministry of Foreign Affairs publish Hungary’s 11 points, marking each as met, partly met or open, with the agreed deadline? Met if the table is updated alongside the meetings of the education subgroup.
Will Hungary’s consular travel advice treat Kyiv and Transcarpathia separately, and will the foreign ministry join joint evacuation planning with other EU member states and the EU delegation in Kyiv, agreeing routes and assembly points in advance?
Will the government refrain from any new, non-competitive, discretionary grants to Vojvodina organisations until the 8 November election of the Hungarian National Council, while honouring payments already committed? Otherwise the competing Hungarian organisations in Vojvodina do not get a level playing field.
Will the government, on a proposal from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, state in writing that it backs a jointly mandated European negotiator, provided the European Council issues the mandate with written guidelines, the negotiator represents all 27 member states, every capital gets the same briefing within 48 hours of each round, and nothing about Ukraine is agreed without Ukraine? Met if the decision is taken at the 26–27 November summit at the latest and Hungary opens no parallel national channel.
Will the government state what commitments it has made in connection with Mol’s deal over the Serbian oil company NIS, and how it will respond if the buyer turns out to be a US firm? Met if the statement makes clear that Hungary’s votes on EU sanctions will not depend on the outcome of the deal.
Whether, before the EU summit planned for 13 November, the Government states in writing on its website that a settlement concluded without Ukraine and the EU will not bind Hungary in EU votes on sanctions and support for Ukraine. Fulfilment also requires a written Ministry of Foreign Affairs scenario for what Hungary does if the great-power summit goes ahead anyway.
Whether a joint technical document is agreed with the member states whose trade and labour markets depend on open internal borders — Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czechia, Romania and the Benelux countries — on the proportionality and time requirements for internal border-control notifications.
Will the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Children publish the report’s methodology by 15 November and the baseline data by 15 December? Met if, for each school, it shows minority status, the share of pupils taught in Hungarian, the head’s command of the language and the number of pupils sitting their final exams in Hungarian.
Will the foreign ministry, through its economic diplomacy channels, draw up a voluntary standard for Hungarian firms in Ukraine covering minimum operations during air-raid alerts, a consular notification chain for posted staff and a designated crisis contact?
Will the education subgroup of the Hungarian–Ukrainian joint commission hold its inaugural meeting and adopt public rules of procedure? Met if the rules provide for quarterly meetings, a public summary within 15 days, permanent participation by Transcarpathian Hungarian organisations, a complaints channel and an escalation ladder.
Whether the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with the Ministry of Defence, sets out in writing before the first substantive Council debate that Hungary will not block an EU Black Sea mission and, if it does not wish to take part, will use constructive abstention. A good sign would be a Hungarian request for a comparative analysis of escort, coastal air policing and combined mandates before the decision.
Will the Ministry of Transport and Investment, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, launch expert talks in the Budapest-based Danube Commission on a monthly dataset covering waiting times, restrictions and security incidents around the Sulina channel? A further sign of success would be the first monthly release by the first quarter of 2027.
Will the government commission a cross-ministry scenario for a lasting divergence between US and EU policy on Russia, covering energy, defence procurement and intelligence cooperation? Met if a public summary is released and the government briefs the National Assembly’s national security and defence committees.
If Hungary joins the common EU response, whether it ties that to concrete, quantified compensation — and states the ask at the start of negotiations rather than the end. Measure: whether a Hungarian party appears on the Franco-Saudi logistics working group and the Three Seas energy project list.
Whether Hungary proposes a procedural agreement in the Council sanctions working party handling delisting requests separately, filed at least 60 days before renewal with written reasons — so a single name can no longer hold the whole list hostage.
Will the programme’s projects be published by beneficiary, country, amount, purpose and proof of delivery, in step with the appointment of its new head? Once the review is closed, an independent evaluation should show which projects achieved their aims.
Will a separate bilateral agreement or timetable emerge on the MOL–Naftogaz storage dispute, kept apart from decisions on Ukraine’s accession clusters? Met if the government handles the energy dispute within EU energy-market rules and does not tie it to its accession votes.
Will the government publish, before talks on the two remaining clusters, what its further consent depends on, without adding conditions beyond the June agreement? Met if the yardstick rests on delivery of the 11-point timetable and the share of schools granted minority status, and mirrors the same test on Hungary’s own minority-language schools.
Whether the foreign ministry produces an annual public report of at most thirty pages on what Hungary’s room for manoeuvre depends on: partner-economy political risk with quantified trade transmission, the energy sourcing mix, and exposure in EU decision-making.
Whether Hungarian foreign-policy doctrine states in fixed form that the standard for defending judicial independence cannot be split by geography — and whether the next alliance credibility audit itemises ICC-related expectations.
Whether Hungarian rejections in unanimity files come with published written reasoning. The baseline is essentially zero; MIAK proposes 100 per cent as the target for 2027.
Whether Hungary tables an EU minimum standard for the evidentiary threshold at which a hybrid incident can be attributed to a state. This is the agenda item where the Hungarian position can offer a rule instead of a veto.
Whether the June bilateral agreement’s commitments are published broken into milestones, and how many are met on time. That is the indicator a lifting of the veto could point to.
Whether the government publishes a one-page written position on two points: that Schengen internal border control is an exceptional, proportionate and time-limited instrument tied to a documented public-order or internal-security threat; and that “suspension of Schengen membership” is not an existing legal instrument.
Whether Hungary maintains a pre-formulated, actor-independent position on transit passage — with the same wording in EU fora and in bilateral contacts — backed by its own, continuously updated risk assessment of Hungarian supply routes.
Whether Hungary initiates technical-level incident sharing among the Visegrád Four, Romania and Bulgaria: a fixed reporting form, a set notification deadline, a contact list and a joint analysis twice a year — with no new agency, between existing national bodies.
Whether the government initiates negotiation of a low-water cooperation protocol in the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube: upstream reservoir operating commitments below a threshold level, their duration, the notification regime, and an expert conciliation procedure — not a judicial route — for non-compliance.
Whether a public summary is produced of Hungary’s latest Schengen evaluation results, the shortcomings identified and the measures taken, together with border-policing staffing and equipment capacity data — a norm-defending position can only be pressed on the back of verifiable own performance.
Whether the government publishes its four-part criteria before the substantive EU decision: quantified energy exposure, the legal position on free passage through straits, the scope of EU solidarity obligations, and the compensation sought.
Is the climate chapter of the Coalition Map published, naming the like-minded member states issue by issue — and do at least six member states representing over 35 per cent of the EU population back the Hungarian position by the Council vote?
Whether V4 information exchange turns into real data sharing — joint publication of weekly retail averages, border filling-station volumes and monthly excise receipts — or the region slides into cascading price caps.
Whether the government names at least two alternative coalition partners for every key EU file — cohesion, agriculture, energy market rules, enlargement — with the offered quid pro quo recorded and reviewed twice a year.
Will the government switch to open calls for funding Hungarian organisations and media in Vojvodina, with recipient-level public data and media contracts that guarantee editorial independence? Target: at least 90 percent of support allocated competitively by the end of 2027.
Will the government publish which Hungarian energy and industrial deals the next economic sanctions package would hit, the expected cost, and what temporary exemption it seeks on what evidence? Met if any exemption request is tabled openly at the start of talks rather than extracted by a last-minute veto.
Ahead of the Berehove meeting, will the government publish a review showing which points have been delivered, which are slipping and what the next deadline is? The next stage, on language use and dealings with public authorities, should be prepared at working level so that the meeting itself only has to confirm it.
Will Hungary publicly join the Bulgarian, Romanian and Turkish initiative, with the ban covering both warring parties, traffic bound for Danube ports and the Sulina channel entrance? If this did not happen at the summit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should table a proposal at the next Foreign Affairs Council.
Will the Ministry of Foreign Affairs brief Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and European Affairs Committee within a week of each round of peace talks on what Hungary learned from EU and US briefings, the position it took and any change in its room for manoeuvre? Met if an unclassified public summary follows each briefing, starting with the round expected in mid-November.
Done: the seven draft regulations the Ministry of Finance put out for public consultation on 9 October state that disability benefits will rise by 10 per cent in January 2027, and that older disability benefit recipients will receive the same tiered increase as low-income pensioners. There is still no rule on catching up recipients under 65 or on indexing the linked thresholds.
Missed: in the week after the summit the Government did not publish the size of Hungary’s national envelope, the extra cohesion funding requested or its regional justification. On 20 October the Prime Minister said only that there can be no joint EU budget until the migration fine is settled.
Missed: by the 23 October deadline the tax authority and the Hungarian State Treasury had not published channel-by-channel payment data for the first instalment of the diesel subsidy, an explanation of mistaken transfers or the number of complaints, and nothing was announced on data checks before the 30 October instalment.
Missed: by the 23 October deadline no public stress test of the diesel supply chain had been carried out, even though Ukrainian drones may have hit a key Druzhba pipeline station on 20 October and the Croatian Adria pipeline has not yet been tested for the volumes Hungary would need.
Missed: by the 23 October deadline the ministry responsible for the environment had not published the environmental permit application for the Paks riverbed sill, the status of the procedure or a summary of Hungary’s reply to the European Commission.
Missed: by the 22 October deadline the week’s press reported no bill strengthening the independence of the State Audit Office, and no decision was made to channel any review of the institution through Parliament.
Missed: by the 22 October deadline no itemised Horizon re-entry checklist, submission date or plan for recovering the domestic bridge funding had been published, and the week’s press reported nothing on preparing the request.
Missed: by the 22 October deadline no public sector-level exposure map of Hungarian suppliers dependent on US demand had been produced, and no targeted SME support tied to measurable commitments was announced.
Missed: by the 22 October deadline no itemised final report on the Danube crisis response had appeared, covering the cost of the riverbed sill and barge sinking, lost output and additional imports. Meanwhile on 21 October a turbine generator at Paks Unit 1 tripped, leaving the plant running at roughly half its rated capacity.
Missed: by the 22 October deadline no public risk register of legacy pollution sites exposed by falling water levels had been compiled. On 20 October the Constitutional Court struck down the government decree provision that had allowed remediation to be postponed, but that does not replace the register.
Missed: by the 21 October deadline the Government had not disclosed how many short-term observers the Foreign Ministry was sending to the OSCE/ODIHR mission for Serbia’s 25 October election.
Missed: the Council closed the conditionality procedure and released the EUR 4.2 billion on 13 October, but no government evidence package with implementation data appeared in the press before the decision.
Missed: by the 19 October deadline the ministry had not published a takeover plan for the state road operator Magyar Közút with an asset and contract inventory, the grading of the staff taken back and service indicators for winter maintenance. The week’s press only covered the planned 2027 review of concession spending.
Missed: by the 19 October deadline there was no sign that the Government had asked the European Commission in writing to assess Hungary’s exposure to the 100 percent US tariff, and no public contact log was started.
Missed: by 18 October no concrete diversification timetable covering Croatian LNG, the Adria pipeline and reducing reliance on Urals crude had appeared. On 17 October the Prime Minister said it would be logical to extend the US exemption for Russian crude that expires in November.
Missed: by 18 October the week’s press carried no information on the 482-page set of MTI news agency documents being put into a searchable, machine-readable database.
Missed: by 18 October the week’s press carried no information on a public summary of the crisis protocol for the embassy in Kyiv and the consular posts in Transcarpathia, even though another massive attack hit Ukraine’s energy system on the night of 16 October.
Missed: by 16 October no reform roadmap assigning a responsible ministry, deadline and indicator to each recommendation of the rule of law report had appeared. A civil society analysis published on 12 October urged a public status table per recommendation in a dedicated Hungary case study.
Missed: no public Hungarian position on the five proposed new EU own resources appeared before the 15–16 October European Council. The Irish presidency’s negotiating box of 10 October kept the new own resources, and the summit reached no agreement on the budget framework.
Missed: no Friends of Cohesion declaration with measurable performance commitments appeared before the October European Council, and according to the foreign press the 17-member group did not even react publicly to the negotiating box. Hungary did not publish baseline values either.
Missed: by 15 October no government decree had been issued on a uniform procedure for state audits. On 16–17 October two ministries filed criminal complaints after audits (the Kisfaludy tourism programme and Családbarát Magyarország), but there was no word on publishing the full final reports.
Missed: by 15 October the justice minister’s report with an itemised inventory of the powers of the Supervisory Authority for Regulated Activities (SZTFH) had not been published. At the same time the press reported the resignation of the authority’s president and its planned abolition on 1 January 2027.
Missed: by 15 October no itemised list had appeared showing which budget lines and measures make up the announced saving of some HUF 700 billion. The Fiscal Council gave its opinion on this year’s budget amendment on 14 October, but there was no word on an itemised breakdown of the saving.
Missed: by 15 October the week’s press carried no information on the full draft climate law being posted on the government website for consultation of at least 28 days.
Missed: no written Hungarian position on reforming unanimity, broken down by policy area, appeared before the October European Council. The Commission’s enlargement package of 6 October would move the opening of chapters to qualified majority, while on 7 October the enlargement commissioner said unanimity could stay.
Missed: by 13 October the report required by government resolution on the Paks shutdown, with a chapter on costs, had not been published. On 14 October the lowest water level ever was measured at Paks; the units did not have to be shut down thanks to the riverbed sill built in the summer.
Missed: no public Hungarian position appeared before the EU oil coordination meeting of 15 October. On 7 October member states decided to release further crude and diesel stocks only after an assessment by the International Energy Agency.
Missed: by the 12 October deadline the week’s press carried no information on the government publishing an impact assessment of merging the Counter Terrorism Centre (TEK) into the police, covering the duplications removed, operational capability and internal oversight.
Missed: by 12 October the week’s press carried no information on a quarterly food shock impact sheet, even though several fresh data releases on drought-related crop losses and grain prices appeared.
Missed: by 12 October no roadmap with annual targets for reducing dependence on Russian oil and gas had appeared. On 6 October an agreement was reached in Zagreb on a joint cross-border gas field, expanding the gas interconnector and supporting talks between Mol and Janaf, but without milestones.
Missed: by 11 October the government had not ordered an independent risk-sharing audit of every concession and PPP contract above HUF 10 billion. There were only one-off steps: in early October an 11-year contract was signed for one section of the M6 motorway, and the main motorway concession is being terminated.
Missed: by 11 October the week’s press carried no information on a joint statement by the Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority and the disaster management agency on the Zaporizhzhia risk.
Missed: by the 10 October deadline no rule had been adopted requiring a mandatory, public prior impact assessment for amendments to the Fundamental Law or to cardinal laws. On 8–9 October the Prime Minister’s Office said only that preparation of a new constitution would start this autumn, with broad participation and a confirmatory referendum. No impact assessment requirement was mentioned.
Missed: by 10 October the transport ministry had not published the list of projects in the rail programme or the calculation behind their ranking. On 15 October the press reported only a review of the HUF 11,000 billion project portfolio and a higher road renovation budget for 2027.
Missed: by 10 October the government had not adopted a uniform protocol for press events. On 5 October Parliament’s press office, citing a rule from June, refused entry to a Partizán film crew. That was a decision of Parliament’s administration; the Prime Minister only voiced his disagreement.
Missed: by the 8 October deadline no bill establishing a corruption investigation office independent of the government had been put before Parliament. Among the accountability institutions, the week saw only the leadership of the asset recovery office being completed.
Missed: by 8 October no public summary of preparations for possible Russian retaliation had appeared. On 15 October the foreign press reported that the government had not confirmed whether the Hungarian–Russian intergovernmental commission would meet next year.
Missed: by the 7 October deadline the week’s press carried no route-by-route estimate of how much transit times and haulage costs would rise if internal border checks were reinstated.
Missed: by 7 October no targeted amendment to the public procurement law had been tabled to close the loopholes used by repeat winners. On 7 October the transport minister only announced that exclusions could follow over serious irregularities and that reference requirements would be eased.
Missed: by 6 October the 35-year motorway concession contract and its annexes had not been made public. On 7 October the Prime Minister announced that the concession company accepts termination of the contract, but the cost of the exit is not known.
Missed: by 6 October the week’s press carried no information on publication of the traffic calculation for the Mohács bridge or of how the HUF 76 billion saving was derived.
Missed: the September flash report of 5 October also gave the nine-month deficit excluding EU pre-financing, but no separate, machine-readable series of one-off, timing and structural items appeared. Critics questioned the monthly improvement precisely by pointing to one-off effects.
Missed: by 5 October no public negotiating mandate on sharing Danube water with upstream countries had been adopted. On 7 October record low water levels were measured at almost every Hungarian gauging station, and the European Commission is looking into the riverbed sill at Paks following an Austrian complaint.
Missed: by the 3 October deadline the week’s press carried no information on a monthly itemised statement of the asylum-related penalty payments or of the portion recovered by offsetting.
Missed: by the 3 October deadline the week’s press carried no information on a breakdown of current users of the state guarantee by company size, sector, region and coverage ratio.
Missed: by the 2 October deadline the week’s press carried no information on a full public review of the Kisfaludy programme’s non-competitive one-off tourism grants, or on any clawback.
Missed: by the 2 October deadline the week’s press carried no information on pre-announced sales rules for the foundation assets reverting to the state.
Done: on 29 September the government published a year-by-year list of the titles of all 3,598 non-public government resolutions (numbered in the 2000 series) adopted between 2010 and 2026. The full texts, an estimated 10,000 pages, remain non-public.
Missed: by 1 October no public breakdown of EU fund drawdowns by operational programme and legal title had appeared, so the dispute over HUF 3,650 billion versus EUR 16.4 billion remains unresolved.
Missed: by 1 October the recovered foundation assets and their funding channels had not been published in machine-readable form on a public-spending dashboard. In early October the Prime Minister’s Office published a map-based database only for National Cultural Fund grants.
Missed: by the 1 October deadline the week’s press carried no information on a regularly updated fuel stock dashboard broken down by product type.
Missed: by the 1 October deadline the week’s press carried no information on a public version of the Paks II risk register.
Missed: by the 1 October deadline the week’s press carried no information on a monthly, machine-readable exposure register covering energy import routes.
Missed: by the 1 October deadline the week’s press carried no information on a weekly southern supply report covering disruptions at border filling stations and flows at the Kiskundorozsma entry point.
Missed: by 1 October no uniform national order of priority for water use had been adopted, even though that day the Danube in Budapest fell to -1 cm, its lowest level since records began in 1823. Water management was on the agenda of the 2–4 October off-site cabinet meeting, but there was no word on the order of restrictions.
Missed: by 1 October the withheld health system audit reports had not been released. On 2 October officials said only that an amended decree would make the background to drug reimbursement decisions public.
Missed: by 1 October no machine-readable waiting list data broken down by institution and procedure had been published. According to the press summary of 4 October, the waiting list reduction plan is still a proposal posted on social media, with no draft decree.
Missed: by 1 October no decision had been taken to assign market surveillance under the AI Act to a dedicated unit with its own budget, and no competence inventory had appeared. The science and technology minister’s 29 September interview set out only intentions.
Missed: on 22 September, the same day as the September Inflation Report, the MNB’s Monetary Council decided to lower the inflation target from 3 to 2.5 percent. The week’s press reported no prior public consultation paper or stand-alone impact assessment, so consultation before the change can no longer take place.
Missed: by the 30 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on the Office of the National Assembly publishing a machine-readable table of adopted laws with their submission and final-vote dates and whether an impact assessment and public consultation took place.
Missed: by the 30 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on Parliament adopting the legislative package implementing the EU migration pact, nor on any separation of directly applicable regulations from directives requiring transposition.
Missed: by 30 September the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not published a competence profile for each category of posting. On 2 October the press reported that several key postings, including Moscow, were left without an ambassador.
Missed: Hungary submitted its final Recovery and Resilience Facility payment request by the 30 September deadline, with roughly EUR 9.1 billion at stake according to the press, and the European Commission is due to decide by year-end. No public, regularly updated schedule of the outstanding commitments was published, however.
Missed: on 29 September the Court of Justice of the EU rejected Poland’s request to suspend the provisional application of the Mercosur agreement. The week’s press carried no information on a Hungarian negotiating position seeking a quantified, automatic safeguard clause.
Missed: by the 30 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on the financing of regional port and rail transit capacity being put on the agenda.
Missed: by the 30 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on a second round of forensic IT and document audits covering server access, deletion logs and physical archives.
Missed: by the 30 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on the full reasoning behind subsidy revocation decisions being published together with the decisions.
Missed: by 30 September no uniform settlement protocol had been issued for winding up the public-interest asset management foundations. The week’s press carried no information on one, and the settlement of accounts for the dissolved foundations runs until 31 October.
Missed: by the 30 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on an independent fiscal council starting work or issuing a first quarterly report.
Missed: by 30 September neither a regulation on ending the interest rate cap nor a public impact assessment had appeared. According to press reports on 1 October, the measure stayed in force simply because no government decision was taken, so the postponement came without a decision or justification.
Missed: by the 30 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on raising Hungary’s strategic oil stocks to 90 days. On 2 October the G7 agreed on a coordinated four-month release of stocks.
Missed: by 30 September no baseline survey of waiting lists with a public methodology had appeared. Press coverage focused on details of the programme, such as afternoon and weekend surgery and incentives, not on a baseline.
Missed: by 29 September no independent data quality council had been set up alongside the Central Statistical Office. Meanwhile, according to press reports summarised on 4 October, the office faced data quality criticism over an earlier revision of its poverty figures.
Missed: after the 29 September sector meeting the press reported only that hauliers had received promises and that a protest remained on the table. There was no word of a tapering bridge subsidy tied to fleet renewal, while payment of the first instalment of the general diesel subsidy began on 30 September.
Missed: no public scenario sheet appeared before the 30 September NIS deadline, nor a status report within 72 hours afterwards. On 2 October the press reported that, according to Forbes, the Mol–Gazprom talks had collapsed, while Mol says the process continues under an OFAC licence valid until 30 October.
Missed: by the 29 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on a written Hungarian position prepared in advance for consultations under NATO Article 4, even as tensions in the region kept rising.
Missed: by the 29 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on publication of the hail suppression system’s data or on the mandate of an independent review body.
Missed: by the 28 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on rotating supply restrictions and compensation for industrial consumers being set out in legislation.
Missed: by the 28 September deadline the week’s press carried no information on public impact assessments for heat-related exemptions in transport and water use.
Missed: by 25 September neither a single list of the subsidy cases under transparency review nor a pre-set set of criteria had been published. The week brought only further one-off steps, such as the follow-up audit of the Fradiváros subsidy ordered on 25 September.
Done: on 13 October the Council of the EU lifted the 2022 conditionality measures, reopening Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe to the universities run by public-interest foundations. A public breakdown of funding by institution and programme has not yet appeared.
Missed: on 19 October the National Assembly passed the 2026 budget amendment by 134 votes to 48, raising the deficit target to 7.5 per cent. The week’s press carried no sign that a sensitivity annex with baseline, adverse and favourable scenarios was attached before the final vote.