The squandering of EU money on futile, overpriced projects has a long and well-documented history. But this time tiny Hungary reversed that nasty trend and made all that waste worth it. When the EU-funded free energy machine finally comes out of the shadow, there will be world peace!

We already built a 40-centimeter tall lookout tower in the tiny village of Bodrogkeresztúr, a bicycle rack made of logs on the ground in Várgesztes, and a 4D cinema with only 9 seats in the beautiful hamlet of Nagygéc. But worry not, Nagygéc only has 10 registered residents, and one of them will surely volunteer to share a seat if the need ever strikes. CORRECTION: Nagygéc has only 6 inhabitants so they will be comfy in the 9-seated cinema.

9-seated 4D cinema for the 10 residents of Nagygéc for nearly 2 million euros of EU funds

But of course, Nagygéc didn’t just receive a cinema for all that money. They also have this memorial park commemorating the “communist village-destruction” that didn’t happen. In 1970 a flood destroyed the village* and the authorities refused to put too much effort into rebuilding it.

Let’s just taste this sentence again: The communist authorities refused to waste money…

Nagygéc also received a memorial for all that money

Fast forward 46 years and we have EU development money giving Nagygéc not only an ugly memorial and a 4D cinema – but a Church of Survival.

Infinite energy machine

The above gems have been contenders for the “most inane waste of taxpayer’s money” prize – until now. But today, we announce a winner: an infinite energy machine for the insubstantial sum of 1.6 million euros. Insubstantial, considering its potential. If it ever becomes public.

A joint effort by Szkeptikus Blog and Átlátszó has discovered what is well-placed to be the most outstanding case of bureaucratic fraud and stupidity in Europe. It took them some back-and-forth with the ministry in charge because said ministry appears shy about their achievement. They shouldn’t be. Because

if the paperwork doesn’t lie, we have just solved the energy crisis of the planet.

A small Hungarian company active in the environmental recycling field has successfully applied for funds to develop a version the perpetuum mobile – in the form of a free energy machine.

Remember the cat and the buttered toast? It is something like that

The theory behind it appears simple, it is well-known (described in a 1998 article by Jean-Louis Naudin) and totally wrong: if you arrange two ferrite magnets at a certain angle, you supposedly generate more energy from their opposing magnetic fields than you need to move those magnets in the first place. Using that surplus energy to gear up a small engine, you may be able to get more than 100% energy efficiency – or so goes the theory. And it would totally work in a different universe with different laws of physics.

So far, so good. The history of mankind is full of wild and ambitious projects, often bankrupting their creators who pursue their dreams in the face of rejection and ridicule. What is unique in this case is not that somebody was stupid again, but that…

…an agency of the Hungarian government granted 1.6 million EUR (490 million HUF) to develop the perpetuum mobile.

The details and whereabouts of this earth-shaking invention are, however, somewhat shrouded in bureaucratic secrecy and subject to ongoing litigation between the investigative journalists and the government. Which is weird, if you think about it – they should be proud and loud about it and making victory laps in Brussels and Riyadh.

It appears that the original grant was reduced to a mere 247 million HUF (800 000 EUR), of which 85% came from EU funds and 15% from the Hungarian taxpayers. They used this money to buy state-of-the-art, albeit disappointingly traditional equipment to manufacture this fantastic, new machine. The government would neither confirm nor deny that the machine was successfully developed and refused to provide more information on the grounds of ’commercial interests’.

Don’t worry, we will keep you posted.

Project documentation – disappeared from ministry’s website since

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* Quite predictably, since it was built on flood plain and could not be defended from a breakdown of a dam on the Romanian side. Which is exactly what happened in 1970. If anything, blame the borders for the village’s misery.