Since 2017, a total of 61 billion forints have been allocated by Kisfaludy 2030 Plc., which falls under the Hungarian Tourism Agency. Overall, 178 municipalities have shared in the amount for the implementation of 454 tourism-related projects. According to 24.hu’s aggregation, 78.4 per cent of this amount was received by municipalities led by Fidesz mayors.
Nearly 11 billion forints have been allocated to settlements headed by independent mayors. Municipalities led by opposition-aligned parties and associations received 2.2 billion forints in support – more than half of this, 1.2 billion forints, was received by non-profit organisation Nagyatádért Egyesület (‘Association For Nagyatád’). This represents only 3.6 per cent of total support. It’s important to note that our aggregations do not include municipally owned companies, as our analysis – based on Kisfaludy 2030’s 310 page document – was limited to municipalities themselves.
The funds were distributed for
- accommodation development,
- infrastructure development,
- development of beach facilities,
- and tourist attraction development.
A significant portion of the money was not allocated through open tenders, but rather through individual „ad hoc” decisions. During Zoltán Guller’s time as the CEO of the Hungarian Tourism Agency, he would make these funding decisions personally and alone (our paper previously won a lawsuit against the Agency regarding the case of secret funding). Guller currently serves as the Agency’s Chairman of the Board.
One could argue that it’s logical for Fidesz-led municipalities to receive the majority of the support since the majority of Hungarian municipalities are headed by government-party politicians, with hardly any opposition mayors in the picture. However, looking at cities with county rights (a level of administrative subdivision awarded to county seats and a few other major cities, also referred to as urban counties), we can see that there was no apparent effort to minimize the influence of party-politics considerations. While the majority of these cities are Fidesz-led, 10 of the 23 have mayors who could be considered opposition-aligned. Nonetheless, funding distribution regarding these cities is also highly one-sided.
We wanted to know whether opposition-led urban counties have even applied for tourism funds, or have they been simply excluded from the distribution of support. However, to our inquiry sent out on October 5th, we only received a response from Szombathely. The municipality stated that they had applied once for the renovation of Szombathely’s Tourinform office through a municipal-owned company and had been awarded 20 million forints. It should be noted, however, that there was an open tender for the renovation of these offices especially; these funds were not subject to individual decisions. Apart from this, Szombathely did not apply for any tenders.
Based on the response, it is also conceivable that opposition-led cities may choose to abstain from competition altogether: perhaps they believe they would not receive state support anyway from the Hungarian Tourism Agency, placed under the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office led by Antal Rogán.
It can also be easily inferred that the larger the sum in question, the more likely it is to end up with Fidesz-led municipalities. While of the projects supported with less than 5 million forints, only five went to government-backed municipalities, and 26 to independent ones, for funds between 150 million and 1 billion forints, the ratio is 50-50. However, for projects with support exceeding 1 billion forints, there is again a significant Fidesz dominance.
The imbalance becomes even more apparent when looking at the top 10 largest tourism support grants, as all of them went to cities led by Fidesz. Balatonfüred received the most public funding (7.8 billion forints); the town on Lake Balaton’s northern shore is followed closely by Debrecen with 7.5 billion, while Esztergom in the third place raked in 6.5 billion. (The rest of the order is as follows: Csurgó: 2.9 billion, Tihany: 2.8 billion, Balatonboglár: 2.5 billion, Lenti: 2.4 billion, Csorna: 2.2 billion, Berettyóújfalu: 2 billion).
Balatonbolgár and Fonyód, two cities on Balaton’s southern shores, will implement the highest number of individual projects, 23 and 19, respectively. Balatonfüred also secures a place on the podium with 15 projects. It’s also interesting to note that while Balatonfüred and Tihany together received over 10 billion in state funding, the most populous and largest-area city along Balaton’s shoreline, Siófok, got only a fraction of that amount, 148 million forints – the mayor of Siófok is not affiliated with Fidesz.
Esztergom, which received the third-largest amount of state support, is worth mentioning as well. The mayor of the city, Ádám Hernádi, had previously served as the head of the cabinet at the Hungarian Tourism Agency for a year and was also a board member of Kisfaludy 2030 Zrt. between October 2018 and February 2019 – if anyone, he must surely know how to submit a great application. It’s perhaps this experience that resulted in Esztergom receiving one of the largest amounts of state funding; and also being one of the two municipalities that has received tourism-related support in 2023: 1.5 billion forints, to be exact. The other such municipality – perhaps unsurprisingly considering all the above – is Balatonfüred.
Concerning tourism support, it was previously reported by VálaszOnline that the government had allocated two-thirds of total funding to only half a per cent of all applicants (including companies, individuals, municipalities, etc.).
