Our team helps governments, municipalities and businesses evaluate programs and implement their strategies. This does not mean coming up with a great solution, but implementing the best possible solution in a given situation. It may also involve subsidies. These are not a priori bad or good, it is a tool in the hands of people. Through subsidies, governments seek to influence the strategic direction of investment in a direction that will benefit our society in the long term. Ensure better education and access to information, level out regional disparities, integrate selected social groups, promote sustainable entrepreneurship, transform selected industries using new technologies. To sum it up, improve the quality of public intervention.

The Hungarian sidewalk brought no benefit for society, but cheap ridicule is the last thing that would help us. We do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say that subsidies do not serve their purpose and should be abolished, do we? If we familiarise ourselves with the objectives of the subsidy programmes that we define together in Brussels, we agree that they cannot be blamed for the scandal. 

I know from experience that European officials judge the correctness of the subsidy awarded mainly by the extent, to which the defined objectives have been met, by its benefits. On the contrary, the national level often brings more emphasis on meeting the formal conditions of a given grant call and less understanding of the dynamic development of the external environment, which can fundamentally affect the initial assumptions. At the national level, all the details may fit, but the result may be miles away from the original intention.