Theft and waste of public money: another source of fiscal adjustment

HUNGARY - In Brief 09 Jun 2026 by Istvan Racz
The following story is published here to demonstrate that EU money is not the only, and perhaps not even the main, possible source of fiscal adjustment in Hungary, and to contribute to the explanation of why the Tisza government is not starting its operation by raising taxes and/or reducing spending on pensions or family benefits, etc.Ferenc Bíró, the head of Hungary's Integrity Authority, gave a long interview in the local media the other day, the first of this kind since the turn of politics at the April election. In the main, he claimed that the total cost of corruption, in terms of the public money lost, reached no less than HUF60000bn over the 16-year period of the Orbán regime. This represents 7.8% of the total of GDP produced by the Hungarian economy over the same period. And he called that a conservative estimate.The Integrity Authority is an autonomous organ of public administration in Hungary. It is essentially an anti-graft agency, which was initiated by the EU and set up in 2022, at the time when already serious doubts occurred regarding the regularity of the utilisation of EU grants. At that time, Hungary's government was still trying to get its share of cohesion policy funds from the EU, and it agreed to the setting up of that institution, legally mandated to watch and guard the legality of EU funds' utilisation.The selection of the top managers of the Integrity Authority was supervised by the EU Commission, and so Fidesz was unable to insert their people into these jobs. This was how Mr. Bíró, a forensic and compliance expert, formerly a PwC partner, was appointed as the head of the new institution. Unfortunately, he quickly got into a sharp conflict wit...

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