Part I — Situation overview

On 2 September 2026 24.hu published — and Telex took over the same day — the result of the freedom of information request in which the editorial team asked for the previous government’s non-public government decisions from the beginning of the year. The Prime Minister’s Office released 55 documents bearing the signature of the then prime minister Viktor Orbán: those whose publication, in the chancellery’s judgement, does not conflict with national security, defence or law enforcement interests. From the numbering of the decisions the paper concluded that a further 28 documents remain closed even after the review. The overwhelming majority of the released material provided for the distribution of money and for budgetary reallocations; the aggregate order of magnitude exceeds 500 billion forints, and the greater part of the decisions was taken in the months preceding the April parliamentary election. Companies, foundations, associations and cultural organisations figure among the beneficiaries — among the larger items, the more than 11.5 billion forints awarded for the Dunaföldvár investment of Vajda-Papír Kft. stands out (for the greater part falling due in 2027), together with support for a church property purchase of up to 308 million forints, and a Brussels property purchase of 7.248 billion forints gross which, according to HVG’s information, ultimately fell through. According to Miklós Ligeti, legal director of Transparency International, with this practice the previous government failed to observe even the provisions it had itself adopted.

The background to the story is legal-technical, and this is what makes the topic structural. In Hungarian public law a government decision is not a piece of legislation: in the system of Act CXXX of 2010 on legislation, a normative decision of the Government is a public law instrument of organisational regulation which binds the Government and the bodies under its direction, but does not lay down a general rule of conduct for citizens. Moreover, the greater part of the decisions now brought to light, which provide for the distribution of money, are not even normative but individual decisions. Neither category falls under the same promulgation requirement as an act or a decree, and with a “non-public” classification publication in the Hungarian Gazette may be omitted; the so-called 2000-series of serial numbers has served this purpose for years. The legal form of the decision is therefore the least constrained, while its budgetary consequence may be of any size — this asymmetry is an operating fault of the system, not a side effect.

MIAK’s reading is therefore not built on exposure. The documents now released characterise the previous government cycle, but the legal possibility that made them possible remains unchanged, and is today at the disposal of the present government. Bálint Ruff, the minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office, announced on 1 September that around a hundred secret decisions will soon be made public — this is a correct step, but a one-off gesture, not a rule. A one-off publication is not binding on the next government; a statutory obligation is. The character of the problem is therefore not that some people abused an instrument, but that in the Hungarian public money system there exists a procedure in which even the existence of a decision can be concealed — and as long as this remains so, every government will be tempted.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

The phenomenon can be understood through three frames in the literature. According to the classic formulation of Robert Klitgaard (American economist and corruption researcher, author of Controlling Corruption), corruption flourishes where monopoly and discretion meet an absence of accountability. Within this triad, discretion is the factor that regulation can reduce most effectively — while the non-public government decision is precisely the case of pure, unverifiable discretion. To this, Susan Rose-Ackerman (American lawyer-economist, one of the founders of the institutional economics of corruption) adds in her work Corruption and Government the decisive observation that freedom of information laws in themselves are worth little. The right of disclosure remains empty if the state does not record or publish information in the first place, or if the formal rule is vague. And the volume Spin Dictators by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman (an economist and a political scientist, who developed the concept of “informational autocracy”) explains why it is precisely control over information that has become the main instrument of exercising power in the 21st century in place of open coercion — the concealed decision is not a by-product but a strategy. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes four measurable measures, and all four should be binding on the present government as well. The starting point of the position is that the institution of the non-public government decision need not be abolished — there are genuine cases in which the content of a decision is justifiably closed. What is hidden from the public, however, is not the content but the existence and order of magnitude of the decision, and that is unjustifiable.

3.1 An itemised, public register of every non-public government decision (within 30 days, at the level of a government decree)

The Government should prescribe by decree that for every non-public government decision a public, machine-readable register entry be made within 15 days of its adoption. This should contain four data items: the serial number of the decision, the date of adoption, the amount concerned and the category of the beneficiary (business company, foundation, local authority, church legal person, central budgetary body). The register does not contain the text of the decision, nor the name of the specific beneficiary if the classification justifies its closure — but the existence, timing and financial weight of the decision may not be classified. This distinction is the essence of the whole proposal: the state may say that the content of a decision is confidential, but it may not say that the decision did not happen. MIAK’s programme point A1, the public money dashboard, was written for exactly this gap: allocations of funds above 100 million forints have to appear in a machine-readable, public database.

3.2 An exhaustive list of grounds for classification and a compulsory expiry period (simultaneously with the introduction of the register)

The “non-public” classification should not be a matter of free governmental discretion but tied to grounds listed in advance and itemised: national security interest, defence interest, ongoing international negotiation, ongoing law enforcement proceedings. For every classification it should be compulsory to indicate which ground it was based on, and every classification should receive an expiry period — twelve months as a default. After expiry the decision becomes public automatically, unless the Government extends the closure by a separate, reasoned decision; but in that case the fact of the extension too is entered in the register under 3.1. This structure answers Rose-Ackerman’s observation (see 6.4.2): the right of disclosure works if a vague classification practice that can justify anything at any time is replaced by a precise rule.

3.3 Full access for the State Audit Office and the Fiscal Council (by amendment of legislation, within 90 days)

The State Audit Office (ÁSZ) and the Fiscal Council should receive a statutory, unrestricted right of access to the full text of non-public government decisions, including during the period of classification. An important delimitation: the ÁSZ does not sanction and does not “call the Government to account” — it audits and reports, and the conclusions are drawn by the National Assembly. The proposal therefore does not confer a new competence but supplies the information necessary for the existing audit function: the audit body that examines the budget cannot be cut off from decisions that substantially modify the budget. This also connects directly to MIAK’s programme point G1, the data-driven budget, since unclassified, invisible items are precisely what impair plannability.

3.4 Retrospective, aggregate publication at the end of every cycle (for the National Assembly)

At the end of every government cycle — at the latest within 90 days of the inaugural sitting — the Government should lay before the National Assembly an aggregate statement of all non-public government decisions taken during the cycle: number of items, total financial order of magnitude, distribution of the grounds of classification, and how many of them have become public in the meantime. This measure applies the weakest compulsion of the four, but has the longest-acting effect: if the statement becomes regular, comparison between years will in itself be a disciplining force. MIAK’s programme point G19, radical transparency in economic decision-making, follows the same logic from the side of retrospective evaluation.

The four measures are linked by a single principle: secrecy may extend to the content, not to the existence. The present fault of the Hungarian public money system is not that there are confidential decisions, but that the public cannot count them. In Klitgaard’s frame this means that discretion need not be reduced to zero — that is impossible and not even desirable — but that accountability must be placed alongside it. With a public number of items and sum, discretion remains but becomes measurable; and what is measurable can be called to account at the next election.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Public finance The full set of decisions that substantially modify the budget becomes visible; plannability improves The register imposes an administrative burden on the Prime Minister’s Office, and if badly implemented remains formal
Public administration Indicating the ground of classification disciplines the practice With a broad interpretation of the classification categories the rule can be circumvented (e.g. every decision becomes “national security”)
Audit institutions The ÁSZ and the Fiscal Council see the whole picture, not just the published part Extending access is worth nothing if the result of the audit has no parliamentary consequence
Political competition The rule is symmetrical: it applies in the same way to every future government If the present government publishes only its predecessor’s decisions, the step is consumed as a one-off political gesture

The main question to weigh is the breadth of the classification categories. If practice interprets the concept of “national security interest” extensively, the itemised register remains empty and the reform is fulfilled on paper. Two things can prevent this: the compulsory indication of the ground of classification (because that can be called to account afterwards) and the expiry period (because a decision that becomes public in twelve months is harder to classify without foundation). The proposal tips over to the risk side if the register is introduced but the expiry period is not: in that case the public learns that the decisions exist but never learns what was in them — which is worse than the present state, because it legitimises closure. The four measures work together; two on their own do not.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (proposed KPIs)

MIAK proposes the following performance indicators (KPIs). These are proposed indicators, not government undertakings.

  • The annual number of non-public government decisions and their aggregate financial order of magnitude. This is the only indicator from which it can be decided a year from now whether the gap has closed. If the number does not fall, the reform remained formal.
  • The distribution of the grounds of classification. If “national security interest” is indicated for more than half of the cases, an extensive interpretation of the category is under way.
  • The proportion of decisions actually made public after the expiry period. It is worth taking a proportion above 90 per cent as a target; a value below this indicates the routine use of extension.
  • The number and findings of ÁSZ audits extending to non-public decisions. Access is worth something if the audit body actually makes use of it.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request is addressed to the present government, not to the previous one: alongside the one-off publication of the announced hundred decisions, the rule should also be put in place. A government decree on the itemised register and the expiry period, together with an amendment of legislation on the access of audit bodies, can be created in less than half a year. And to the public the request is only this: do not put the story down at the sum. The 500 billion forints is the balance of one cycle, but the gap that made it possible is in the same place in every cycle.

Among MIAK’s foundational values, transparency and accountability are at work here, and it is important to see that the two are not the same. Transparency in itself is data: we learn that 55 decisions were taken. Accountability is what follows from it as a consequence — that the ÁSZ can examine it, the National Assembly can debate it, and the voter can take it into account. The documents now brought to light deserve a regulatory answer because in this case transparency depended on the chance of a freedom of information request — and what depends on the persistence of an editorial team is not an institution but luck.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The framing of the press, spectrum by spectrum

The liberal-left and public affairs band carried the topic, and the two leading pieces worked in a division of labour. 24.hu published the result of its own freedom of information request and placed the breach of rules at the centre of the framing — according to the paper’s opening, the previous government failed to observe even the rules it had itself adopted, and the expert quoted supported this with a legal qualification as well. The full text of the article is behind a subscription; the publicly accessible part runs to the lead, the methodology and the presentation of the expert position. Telex took over the material the same day in its own treatment and placed the emphasis on the concrete items: the details of the Dunaföldvár investment, the church property purchase and the failed Brussels property purchase can be read there in the greatest detail. At the level of the lead, Népszava highlighted Transparency International’s position that this use of the 2000-series decisions is unlawful (title-level reference only).

The economic band carried a thematically related piece not in connection with this case but in parallel with it: Portfolio reported on the Public Procurement Authority’s audit of the Kazár crèche investment, in which the audit found suspected breaches of law on eleven points in an investment of 500 million forints net financed entirely from EU funds. This framing shows the micro level where the other two papers show the macro level: on one side the invisible package of decisions of the order of hundreds of billions, on the other a 93-litre instead of a 240-litre refrigerator found during an on-the-spot inspection. The two are the two ends of the same gap — the following-up of contracts and the following-up of decisions are alike retrospective and haphazard.

The conservative band did not bring the topic into its top focus on this day. This is not in itself surprising, since the case directly characterises the previous government cycle; at the same time, from MIAK’s point of view it is precisely this absence that provides the most important test of the proposal: a rule that makes only one side’s decisions visible is not a reform but an instrument. The solution proposed in points 3.1–3.4 is symmetrical so that neither side should have grounds for this objection.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
Non-public government decisions released 55 24.hu freedom of information request, 2 September 2026
Decisions remaining closed (inferred from the numbering) 28 24.hu, 2 September 2026
Order of magnitude of the total sum concerned above 500 billion forints 24.hu’s calculation, 2 September 2026
Vajda-Papír Kft., Dunaföldvár investment above 11.5 billion forints (for the greater part falling due in 2027) Telex, 2 September 2026
Support for a church property purchase up to 308 million forints Telex, 2 September 2026
Brussels property purchase (fell through) 7.248 billion forints gross Telex / HVG, 2 September 2026
Number of secret decisions announced for publication around 100 announcement by Bálint Ruff, 1 September 2026
Kazár crèche: investment financed from EU funds 500 million forints net, 12 places, suspected breaches of law on 11 points statement of the Public Procurement Authority, Portfolio, 1 September 2026

A methodological note on the figures above: the order of magnitude above 500 billion forints is the editorial team’s own aggregation on the basis of the 55 released documents. The financial content of the 28 closed decisions is not known, so the total sum may be higher than this — but this cannot be established from today’s data, and MIAK does not estimate it either. This uncertainty is itself the argument for the itemised register under 3.1.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the machine-readable, public disclosure of allocations of funds above 100 million forints (programme point ID: A1) and public procurement anomaly flagging, which connects to the Kazár case (programme point ID: A2);
  • Economy (programme points) — the data-driven budget and the reduction of the share of unclassified expenditure items (programme point ID: G1), as well as the retrospective, public evaluation of economic policy decision-making (programme point ID: G19);
  • Public administration and e-government (background material) — the system of public law instruments of organisational regulation and of individual government decisions, to which the government decision belongs.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption

According to Klitgaard’s fundamental observation, the conditions of corruption can be described structurally and can therefore be influenced by regulation. One of the book’s inserts examines precisely the question of whether more rules lead to less corruption, and its answer is differentiated:

“Consider the conditions under which corruption thrives: monopoly plus discretion, in the absence of accountability.”

Klitgaard immediately adds that rules are not inherently good or bad from the point of view of corruption: a rule may create a monopoly, but it may also reduce discretion and make accountability easier. In the case of the non-public government decision all three factors point in the wrong direction at once. The monopoly of the decision belongs to the Government, discretion is unlimited (there is no tender criterion, no competition), and accountability is zero, because not even the existence of the decision is known. This explains why the promise of publication is not enough in MIAK’s proposal: in Klitgaard’s frame the effective intervention is a change not of intention but of structure — and the register under 3.1 restores precisely the third factor, accountability, without taking away the government’s room for manoeuvre.

📖 Source: Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption

6.4.2 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government

The part of Rose-Ackerman’s book dealing with freedom of information gives the most precise theoretical description of the present case. The author starts from the premise that the right of disclosure is aimed at enabling citizens to learn the reasons for decisions and to identify those most likely to have been influenced by corruption or partiality. Then comes the key sentence:

“A freedom of information law, however, is of little value if the government does not collect much information in the first place. […] Similarly, an open meeting rule is of little value if the formal law is vague so that any decision can be justified.”

The Hungarian situation is a textbook example of this sentence. The right to freedom of information formally functions — the request was ultimately successful — but it is hollowed out at two points. First, no summary register is compiled of non-public decisions that could be requested: the enquirer can only ask for what they know about. Second, the ground of classification is so broad that the closure of almost any decision can be justified. Points 3.1 and 3.2 of MIAK’s proposal answer precisely these two gaps — first let there be a register, then let there be a narrow and indicated ground. According to Rose-Ackerman’s logic, in the reverse order neither works.

📖 Source: Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform

6.4.3 Sergei Guriev – Daniel Treisman: Spin Dictators

Guriev and Treisman’s volume examines how the technique of authoritarian rule has changed compared with the 20th century. According to the authors, today’s leaders build not on fear but on control over information:

“Spin dictators therefore manipulate information in order to boost their popularity in the eyes of the public, which they use to consolidate political control.”

The book’s term for this is “informational autocracy”, and its essence is not lying but the regulation of visibility: what comes before the public, in what form and when. In this frame the non-public government decision is not administrative convenience but the withdrawal of part of decision-making from the public space — without having to deny anything. This reading is not characteristic of one government: the authors’ proposition is precisely that the informational toolkit has spread because it is cheaper and less conspicuous than open coercion. This is why a government gesture on the publication of earlier decisions is not enough; MIAK’s proposal asks for a binding rule, a register and an expiry period because an informational instrument can be neutralised only by an institutional constraint, not by good intentions.

📖 Source: Sergei Guriev – Daniel Treisman: Spin Dictators

6.5 International comparison

The proposed solution is no Hungarian peculiarity. In Slovakia the rule has been in force since 2011 that state contracts enter into force only after publication in the central register — the failure to publish is threatened not by a sanction, but the contract simply is not valid, which is a far stronger compulsion. In Brazil the Portal da Transparência publishes federal expenditure close to real time, broken down by beneficiary. Rose-Ackerman cites Japanese municipal freedom of information ordinances as an example of how quickly disclosure has an effect: after the introduction of the measure, 22 local authorities reported a fall of more than 30 per cent, and a further 14 a fall of more than 10 per cent, in the use of public money spent on previously unaudited purposes. The common element in all three cases is that they build not on retrospective punishment but on prior visibility — this is the mechanism that MIAK’s point 3.1 would apply to Hungarian government decisions.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A1 — Public money dashboard
  • A2 — Public procurement transparency
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances

Economy

  • G1 — Data-driven budget
  • G19 — Radical transparency in economic decision-making
  • G21 — Systematic review of state expenditure

Proposed new programme point: Itemised register and expiry period of non-public government decisions — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 2 September 2026 — topic 3):

Knowledge base references (specialist books):

  • 📖 Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption
  • 📖 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform
  • 📖 Sergei Guriev – Daniel Treisman: Spin Dictators

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A1, A2, A6)
  • MIAK policy area: Economy (programme points; programme point ID: G1, G19, G21)
  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (background material)
  • MIAK press monitor, 2 September 2026 — topic 3, score: 87/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • Hungarian Gazette archive — the continuity of serial numbers of promulgated government decisions
  • Research of Transparency International Hungary; the K-Monitor database
  • Statements of the Public Procurement Authority and decisions of the Public Procurement Arbitration Board

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