Part I — Situation overview

In early July 2026, several personnel changes took place at former President of the Republic Áder János’s Blue Planet Climate Protection Foundation. According to court documents obtained by RTL Híradó, Martonyi János, former foreign minister, resigned from his membership of the board of trustees (the body that directs the foundation), and his place was taken by Freund Tamás, the recently departed president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA). The foundation’s new director-general became Csepreghy Nándor, who from 2022 was deputy minister to Lázár János; by his own account he receives two million forints net a month for the position. The registration of the changes was requested on 17 June, and the court approved it roughly a week ago. Csepreghy, incidentally, had earlier taken part in the operational management of the foundation, but had to resign from it on account of conflict of interest — the legal prohibition of clashing roles — when he took up a state leadership position; now that he is no longer a state leader, this obstacle has been removed.

Behind the personnel changes lies a sharpening public-money dispute. The prime minister criticised the foundation over its use of public money, and publicly demanded evidence or an apology from Áder János, who called the planned removal of public-law dignitaries unconstitutional; in a counter-reply Áder demanded the same from the head of government. According to Telex’s report, the foundation received 7 billion forints of state support before the April election, on top of the earlier sum — those concerned described this publicity as “pathetic flailing”, emphasising that some hundred articles have been written about the affair over the past year.

MIAK’s reading is that the topic is a matter not of the persons but of the institutional structure. At a foundation that also operates from public money and manages assets of public interest, the transparency of the board’s composition, the remuneration and the grants is a question of principle — it does not depend on who established it or who criticises it. As long as the guarantees of public accountability are missing, every change of personnel only stirs the surface; the character of the problem is structural, not personal.

Part II — Literature foundation

Before turning to MIAK’s proposals, let us fix the scholarly frame in which the transparency of foundations managing public money can be interpreted. According to Robert Klitgaard’s C = M + D − A formula, corruption flourishes where a monopoly position and broad discretionary (deliberative) authority meet the absence of accountability — a closed, single-person or narrow-board-allocated asset management fed from public money condenses exactly these three in one place. Susan Rose-Ackerman described the institutional patterns of rent-seeking (the case in which income comes not from production but from a privileged state position): where access to state resources depends not on competition but on personal-political connection, public money systematically flows towards those with access. And the study Governance Matters by Kaufmann, Kraay and Zoido-Lobatón showed that the quality of governance — including corruption control — is measurable, and closely correlated with development outcomes. The detailed literature treatment — by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures which target not a given foundation or person, but set a uniform transparency standard for every public-interest asset-managing foundation operating from public money.

3.1 Full public-money transparency at asset-managing foundations (immediate)

MIAK proposes that every foundation receiving state support publish, in real-time, machine-readable form, the public money received and its use — from the support contracts to the larger payments. In Klitgaard’s C = M + D − A framework (see 6.4.1) this strengthens the A, that is, the accountability factor: if the path of the money is public, the monopoly and discretion risk moderates of its own accord. The practical tool is the A1 public-money dashboard: a single public interface on which public-money spending can be tracked from public procurement to remuneration. This is not a step against the climate goal or the professional activity — on the contrary, it is the protection of legitimate operation against the shadow of suspicion.

3.2 Public, comparable asset declarations and board remuneration (2026)

The asset declarations of the board members and senior officers of foundations managing public money should, according to MIAK, be available not as a PDF but as machine-readable, comparable data — as the A3 programme point prescribes. The same applies to remuneration: the disclosure of leaders’ salaries (in the present case the two-million-a-month director-general’s allowance) is not an offence, but a basic requirement of public-money accountability. Rose-Ackerman’s analysis (see 6.4.2) shows that rent-seeking proliferates precisely in the absence of publicity — public data is its cheapest antidote.

3.3 A mandatory, pre-fixed conflict-of-interest regime (2026–2027)

One lesson of the present affair is that the handling of conflicts of interest today happens case by case, after the fact. MIAK proposes a uniform, pre-fixed conflict-of-interest regime for every foundation managing public money: who, in parallel with which state or political role, may be a board member or leader, and what waiting period (cooling-off, that is, the mandatory pause between positions) must elapse between a state leadership mandate and a leadership post financed from public money. This carries the logic of A6 checks and balances into the foundation sphere: not prohibition for its own sake, but a predictable framework that applies equally to everyone.

These three proposals are bound together by a single principle: MIAK does not judge the persons, but examines the presence of institutional guarantees. Publicity, comparability and the pre-fixed rule together make it impossible for the fate of public money to depend on the composition of the board or on the daily political conflict — exactly as the works of Klitgaard, Rose-Ackerman and Kaufmann suggest.

Part IV — Expected impacts and risks

Dimension Expected impact Risk
Public administration A predictable, uniform transparency standard at every asset-managing foundation The rule applies only to the future; reconstructing past payments is difficult
Economy Narrowing of the room for rent-seeking, more efficient use of public money Too strict a rule may deter legitimate professional board members
Environment and climate Climate-protection goals become more credible if the funding is transparent The political conflict may obscure the actual professional climate work

The main trade-off is the following: the transparency requirement must not be a pretext for professionally crippling a given foundation, and must not be applied selectively — it is credible only if it applies to every asset-managing foundation, regardless of side. The proposal works if accountability is a general rule; it tips to the risk side if it becomes a tool in a political conflict. For MIAK this is precisely the test of being ideology-free: the same yardstick for the climate-protection foundation and for any other foundation operating from public money.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (suggested KPIs)

MIAK considers the following suggested performance indicators (KPIs, in English: Key Performance Indicator) worth tracking:

  • Support disclosure: whether foundations operating from public money publish, machine-readably, the amount of state support received and its use.
  • Asset-declaration publicity: whether the asset declarations of board members and leaders are available as public, comparable data.
  • Existence of a conflict-of-interest framework: whether a pre-fixed, uniform conflict-of-interest and cooling-off rule exists.
  • Corruption-control indicator: whether the trend of Hungary’s World Bank corruption-control index (WGI — Worldwide Governance Indicators) turns in an improving direction from the current value of −0.17.

These are suggestions, not government decisions — MIAK considers worth tracking what shows, on a factual basis, whether the system really became more transparent.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message: behind the personnel changes and the public-money dispute around the Blue Planet Foundation stands a structural question — are there uniform, public guarantees at foundations managing public money. MIAK asks the decision-maker and the public to treat the dispute not as a campaign against persons, but as an occasion to strengthen the transparency framework: a public public-money dashboard, machine-readable asset declarations and a pre-fixed conflict-of-interest rule for every such foundation.

The topic moves two MIAK foundational values. Transparency is at stake because the path of public money can be checked only if it is public and comparable — secrecy is the breeding ground of abuse on every political side. And accountability, because the replacement of persons in itself guarantees nothing; only the pre-fixed rule that applies equally to everyone makes it possible to hold to account, afterwards, whether the public money reached its goal.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 Press framing by spectrum

The liberal-left and public-affairs band (Telex, HVG, 24.hu, Népszava) put the personnel changes and the scale of the public-money support at the centre: Telex detailed the board reshuffle and the dispute over the 7-billion support, 24.hu and HVG the fact of the resignation and its background. The emphasis here was on accountability and public-money publicity. The pro-government-conservative band (Mandiner), by contrast, highlighted not the public-money question but Áder János’s stand for the rule of law — that is, it embedded the story in the constitutional debate, diverting the focus from the funding question. The economic band (Portfolio) did not run the topic as a leading story that day. In the spirit of being ideology-free it should be recorded: the transparency requirement is not one side’s weapon against the other — MIAK would apply the same yardstick to any government-linked or opposition-linked foundation managing public money.

6.2 Facts and data

Indicator Value Source
Csepreghy Nándor’s monthly net remuneration (director-general) 2 million HUF Telex / RTL, 5 July 2026
The foundation’s pre-election state support 7 billion HUF (on top of the earlier 18 billion) Telex, 5 July 2026
The registration request 17 June 2026 court documents, RTL
Hungary’s corruption-control indicator (WGI 2024) −0.17 World Bank WGI

From MIAK’s point of view the figures are not an indictment, but an illustration of the transparency deficit: the order of magnitude of the sums and the haphazardness of publicity together justify a system-level, not person-tailored, solution.

6.3 Policy aspects

  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the public-money dashboard (A1), asset-declaration publicity (A3) and checks and balances (A6) are the gravitational centre of the topic;
  • Environment and climate (background material) — the credibility of the climate-protection foundation’s funding is a precondition for achieving the climate goals;
  • Economy (programme points) — rent-seeking and discretionary resource allocation are the subject of the competition-policy programme.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption

The core of Klitgaard’s analysis is a simple relationship: illegitimate advantage-seeking proliferates where the actor is in a monopoly position, has broad discretionary authority, and has weak accountability. This is condensed by the corruption = monopoly + discretion − accountability formula. The point is not the opposition of the public and private spheres, but the presence or absence of competition and accountability. In the case of Blue Planet-type asset management fed from public money, this means: if resource allocation happens within a narrow circle, on a discretionary basis and without publicity, all three risk elements of the formula are high at once — and the solution is precisely to strengthen accountability (publicity).

📖 Source: Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption

6.4.2 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government

Rose-Ackerman shows, through the phenomenon of rent-seeking, how the public’s resource turns into an object of unproductive distributional struggle: scarce state permits, subsidies and positions regularly flow towards those with political connections, which sets back investment and growth. The lesson for the Hungarian case: where access to a public-money foundation resource depends not on a public, competitive framework but on personal-political proximity, the system is structurally prone to rent-seeking — regardless of the intention of the individual actors. This is why MIAK seeks to change the structure, not the person.

📖 Source: Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government

6.4.3 Kaufmann–Kraay–Zoido-Lobatón: Governance Matters

The authors make six dimensions of governance — including accountability and corruption control — measurable, and demonstrate that these are closely correlated with development outcomes. The message of the study is methodological: the quality of governance is not a hunch, but a state that can be tracked with indicators. In the Hungarian interpretation this gives the yardstick of MIAK’s proposal: the transparency of asset-managing foundations is not a matter of subjective judgement, but — through published data, public asset declarations, a conflict-of-interest framework — measurable and improvable.

📖 Source: Kaufmann–Kraay–Zoido-Lobatón: Governance Matters

6.5 International comparison

The transparency of foundations managing public-interest assets rests on internationally proven practices: the best-governed states make mandatory the annual, itemised and public reporting of non-profit organisations receiving public money, the disclosure of leaders’ remuneration and the advance fixing of board conflicts of interest. According to the data of the Kaufmann-type governance measurement, it is precisely the presence of these guarantees that distinguishes states with high and low corruption control. This is the operational confirmation of what Klitgaard states in theory: the difference is the institutionalisation of accountability, not reliance on good intentions.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A1 — Public-money dashboard
  • A2 — Public-procurement transparency
  • A3 — Publicity of asset declarations
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances

Suggested new programme point: A uniform transparency and conflict-of-interest standard for public-interest asset-managing foundations — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area.

6.7 Source register

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 6 July 2026 — topic 3):

Knowledge-base references (literature):

  • 📖 Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption
  • 📖 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government
  • 📖 Kaufmann–Kraay–Zoido-Lobatón: Governance Matters

Note: in the blog’s visible text the book’s local file path does not appear — only the author and the title.

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A1, A3)
  • MIAK policy area: Environment and climate (background material)
  • MIAK press monitor, 6 July 2026 — topic 3, score: 84/100

Additional public data sources:

  • KEKVA balance sheets; National Asset Management data; foundation public-benefit reports; World Bank WGI

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