Part I — Situation overview

On 2 August 2026 the Danube’s water level at Paks came within one centimetre of the level at which the nuclear power plant has to be shut down, and later reached that threshold; at Budapest the river sank to a historic low. The decisive new piece of information, however, is not the daily water level but the time horizon: according to the expert speaking to ATV’s news programme — citing the seasonal pattern — the Danube’s water level may fall further right through to October, and the second half of the year may be warmer than usual. With this the present situation is reclassified: it is not the end of a heatwave that has to be waited out; instead the electricity supply, the drinking water service, irrigation and navigation all have to be operated simultaneously alongside two to three months of low flow.

The daily picture is to be interpreted against this horizon. According to the statement of Gajdos László, named as the minister responsible for water management, daily water consumption jumped by more than 25 per cent because of the heat; following the voluntary restrictions and the watering bans supply is secured nationally, but in ten to twenty municipalities temporary difficulties may still arise; in Szentendre several thousand people were left temporarily without drinking water. In Budapest BKM FŐKERT shut down all forty of its fountains, and the director general announced that a climate emergency scenario is being drawn up. According to his statement, in August the watering of gardens and parks may under normal circumstances account for as much as ten per cent of urban drinking water use. A complete shutdown, however, would cause irreversible damage to the capital’s green assets, estimated at about 400 billion forints, whose replacement would take years, in some cases decades. In these same days the press documented turf watering in several stadiums despite the ban — the explanation was rainwater or an own drilled well — and panic buying of bottled mineral water also began. Across the border the Romanian Navy, with more than a hundred soldiers taking part, began blasting the Pârjoaia rock at the point where the Danube divides into the Bala and the Old Danube branches, in order to divert more water to the cooling of the Cernavodă nuclear power plant. The Romanian government set aside seven million lei for the works, and by sinking four barges filled with stone an underwater sill is also being formed.

MIAK’s reading: the Hungarian water restriction regime is today written for an extraordinary event, while the forecast signals an operating mode lasting several months. This structural discrepancy explains the three apparently separate conflicts of today. The FŐKERT dispute arose because in the order of restriction urban green space has no separate classification — so the tree line and the fountain fall into the same “not a vital necessity” category, even though one is heat protection infrastructure and the other is decoration. The stadium watering affair arose because no inspection and measurement regime belongs to the ban — so compliance has become a matter of self-declaration. And the Romanian rock blasting makes visible that as a downstream country Hungary cannot settle the most important input variable with its own rules. All three shortcomings stem from the same thing: the rule was made for handling an event, not for an operating mode.

Part II — Literature foundation

Before turning to MIAK’s proposals it is worth fixing the conceptual frame. Elinor Ostrom (American political scientist awarded the Nobel memorial prize in economics, a researcher of commonly used resources) shows in her work Governing the Commons, on the basis of historical case studies — among them Spanish and Philippine irrigation systems — that the sustainable use of commonly used resources depends neither on privatisation nor on a central ban, but on a few design principles: clear boundaries, rules fitted to local conditions, cheap and continuous observation of compliance, and graduated — not immediately maximal — sanctions. The report of Nicholas Stern (British economist, author of the review on the economics of climate change prepared at government request) names water shortage as one of the most important channels through which warming causes economic damage, and emphasises separately that the extent of the damage depends on how far a society is able to adapt in advance. And the volume Warming the World by William Nordhaus and Joseph Boyer (pioneers of climate economics modelling) shows — precisely as a counterpoint — that aggregate global models calculate a ten-year delay of intervention as surprisingly cheap, which is a warning that these models do not see local, irreversible losses. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

📖 Source: Elinor Ostrom: Governing the Commons; Nicholas Stern: The Economics of Climate Change — The Stern Review; William Nordhaus – Joseph Boyer: Warming the World

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. All three supplement the present restriction regime rather than replacing it.

3.1 Promulgating a multi-month drought operating mode with a weekly review point (within 21 days)

Restrictions today are typically made up of a series of daily announcements and municipal decisions. Alongside the October forecast this is unsustainable: neither the agricultural producer, nor the municipality, nor the household can plan within a daily frame. MIAK proposes that the government promulgate a drought operating mode running to the end of September, containing levels, assigning to each level a measured triggering threshold (Danube and Tisza flow rate, groundwater level, drinking water base capacity), and naming for each level which group of users is obliged to restrict what. The operating mode should have a fixed weekly review point, the result of which is published. This is the direct application of the K1 measurable climate targets and the G28 common resource management framework, and it is in accordance with the requirement of the TE4 rural public service minimum: the drinking water outage is today unevenly distributed territorially, so the levels must also be interpretable in a territorial breakdown.

3.2 Classifying urban green space as heat protection infrastructure (within 30 days)

The FŐKERT dispute is not a horticultural detail but the consequence of a classification error. In the order of water use the urban tree line, the park tree and young planting today fall into the same category as the ornamental fountain and the watering of a private garden — even though on heat days the tree canopy gives a measurable reduction in temperature, and is therefore part of the heat protection system, not an aesthetic expenditure. MIAK proposes that the order of priority for water use should name heat protection green infrastructure as a separate category, directly after food production and industrial cooling and ahead of recreational water use; and that a minimal, maintaining irrigation quota should belong to this category, one that remains even at the most restricted level. According to MIAK the classification should not depend on the practice of the operator concerned: the order of priority for water use has to be supplemented with this category at the level of legislation — on the professional proposal of the water management authority, uniformly for every municipality — because without this the capital and the provincial towns will develop differing practices for the same problem (K1, K3).

3.3 A measurement and inspection regime for the watering ban, with graduated sanctions (within 45 days)

The stadium watering affair showed that compliance with the ban today rests on self-declaration: a reference to “an own drilled well” or “rainwater” cannot be verified. MIAK proposes that in the case of non-household users with a large water demand — sports facilities, golf courses, industrial parks, large-scale irrigating farms — the reporting and measurement of their own water abstraction should be compulsory for the duration of the drought operating mode, and that the measured data should enter the official register. The sanction should, following Ostrom’s principle, be graduated: on the first occasion a warning and an obligation to install a meter, on repetition a rising fine, and in the case of persistent breach the suspension of the water rights permit. Graduation here has not a mitigating but an effectiveness role: immediate severe punishment is in practice rarely applied, and therefore does not deter either. The proposal extends the measurement logic of the MG1 precision agriculture programme point to non-agricultural large consumers, and builds on the self-regulating elements of the MG5 common resource management framework.

The three proposals can be strung on a single principle: a restriction can be complied with if it is understandable, if it looks equitable, and if it is visible that others comply with it too. In Ostrom’s frame these are exactly the three missing design elements — the clear rule, the classification fitted to local conditions and cheap monitoring (see 6.4.1). The fourth element, cross-border coordination, MIAK frames not as a conflict but as a missing agreement: the Romanian intervention is lawful on its own territory, but its effect appears in the downstream countries, and the answer to this is a drought-period water-sharing protocol worked out within the framework of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) (KP10, KP15) — not a note of protest.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Economy The month-long operating mode makes irrigation and industrial water use plannable; the measurement obligation reduces illegal abstraction Meter installation and reporting mean an administrative and investment burden for farmers
Society Graduated sanctions and uniform classification temper the feeling that “others will get away with it anyway”, which is the chief enemy of compliance The protected quota of green space will be disputable for those who may not water their own gardens
Environment A significant part of the capital’s green assets can be saved, which also reduces the heat load of the summers to come The maintaining irrigation quota means water abstraction even at the tightest level, which may cause local supply conflict
Foreign policy The water-sharing protocol institutionalises today’s ad hoc reactions Negotiating an agreement takes months and gives no answer to the present fall in water levels

The main trade-off runs between equity and effectiveness. The protected quota for heat protection green space is well justifiable professionally, but hard to communicate to someone from whom garden watering is withdrawn at the same time — which is why the public justification of the classification is not optional. The proposal tips to the risk side if the protected category widens: if every grass surface qualifies as “heat protection infrastructure”, the classification loses its meaning. The quota therefore has to be determined broken down by species and age, in favour of the woody stock.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (proposed KPIs)

Four performance indicators (KPIs) are worth tracking over the next twelve months:

  1. Supply outage: in how many municipalities and for how many hours in total the drinking water service faltered, in a monthly breakdown — proposed target: the reduction of the present ten to twenty affected municipalities to zero by the end of the operating mode.
  2. Green asset loss: the die-off rate of the urban woody stock after the drought period, broken down between the capital and the large towns — proposed target: below 2%.
  3. Inspection rate: at what percentage of non-household abstraction points subject to reporting an actual official inspection took place — proposed target: 30% during the operating mode.
  4. Cross-border coordination: whether formal consultation on a drought-period water-sharing protocol has begun with the Danube riparian countries — proposed target: a first round of negotiations within six months.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message: the October forecast is not worse news than today’s but a different kind of news — it signals an operating mode, not an event, and therefore calls for a different kind of regulation. MIAK asks the government to promulgate within twenty-one days a drought operating mode running to the end of September, broken down into levels and with a weekly review; within thirty days to classify urban green space as heat protection infrastructure in the order of water use; and within forty-five days to introduce a measurement and reporting regime for the water abstraction of non-household large consumers, with graduated sanctions. And it asks the public to treat compliance not as moralising but as rule-following — for which, however, the rule has to be clear and enforced.

Two MIAK foundational values are in play in this matter. Data-drivenness, because the greatest gap in today’s restriction regime is not severity but measurement: we do not know who abstracts how much water, and therefore compliance with the ban is a matter of self-declaration. And universal representation, because the consequences of water shortage are territorially unequal — the ten to twenty affected municipalities are not among the largest towns — and a well-written allocation regime differs from improvisation precisely in that it also names the community in the weakest supply position. This yardstick is valid regardless of which government writes the regime; and the present fall in water levels has also shown that the missing preparation is not the omission of a single term of office.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The liberal-left band chose the frame of structural omission. Both Telex and 444.hu brought up Lázár János’s hearing before a parliamentary committee last December, where the then minister for construction and transport admitted that the government had erred in not building large reservoirs ten years ago, and characterised water shortage as a “brutal reality”. This framing serves to extend responsibility in time — instead of judging today’s governmental performance it makes decade-long unpreparedness the axis of the story. Telex, however, also gave the most detailed report on the intervention on the Romanian side, including local critical voices.

The economic and public affairs bands concentrated on the operational situation report and on city management. Portfolio carried the most concrete data — the reaching of the critical water level at Paks, the involvement of ten to twenty municipalities, the shutdown of the fountains and FŐKERT’s climate emergency scenario with the 400 billion forint green asset estimate — and with the news about the Rhine’s historic low also placed the phenomenon in a European context. 24.hu highlighted the ministry’s reassuring statement (“the household drinking water supply will not be endangered”), while ATV carried the Szentendre supply outage and the October forecast.

The conservative band chose international comparison and the public’s reaction as its frame: Mandiner, under the title So much for Romania?, set the Romanian government’s intervention against Hungarian inaction, and in a separate article dealt with the buying-up of bottled mineral water that had begun. According to MIAK the raising of the comparison conceals a legitimate question — the Romanian side carried out a fast, targeted technical intervention — but the framing keeps silent about the fact that this intervention is unilateral, that its downstream effects were not consulted on, and that precisely for this reason it is not a model to be followed but proof of the missing common regulation. One aspect appeared in no band of the spectrum: that today nobody measures compliance with the watering ban.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
The Danube’s water level at Paks −133 cm, then reaching the critical level Portfolio, 2 August 2026
Time horizon of the forecast fall right through to October ATV, 3 August 2026
Increase in daily water consumption during the heat more than 25% statement of Gajdos László, Portfolio, 2 August 2026
Municipalities affected by drinking water supply difficulty 10–20 Portfolio, 2 August 2026
Fountains and waterfalls shut down in the capital 40 Portfolio and HVG, 2 August 2026
Estimated value of the managed green spaces of the capital approx. HUF 400 bn statement of Dezsényi Péter (BKM FŐKERT), Portfolio, 2 August 2026
Share of garden and park watering in urban water use in August up to 10% statement of Dezsényi Péter, Portfolio, 2 August 2026
Number of soldiers taking part in the Romanian rock blasting more than 100 Telex, 2 August 2026
Sum set aside for the Romanian intervention 7 million lei (from the reserve fund) Telex, 2 August 2026
Barges sunk to close off the Bala branch 4, each approx. 70 m long and 3 m high Telex, 2 August 2026
The plan for deepening the bed of the Old Danube 1 metre Telex, 2 August 2026
The Rhine’s water level historic low, with vessels run aground Portfolio, 2 August 2026

A single connection deserves highlighting. FŐKERT’s two figures read together give the weight of the classification problem: watering is at most ten per cent of urban water use, while the value of the green assets at stake is 400 billion forints, and their replacement is a matter of decades. That is, maintaining urban green space is a small item on the water-saving balance sheet, but a large item on the heat protection balance sheet. A well-written order of priority is capable of handling precisely such asymmetries — a general watering ban is not.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Environment and climate (programme points) — extending the measurable climate targets and pollution monitoring to water abstraction data, and the classification of heat protection green infrastructure (programme point ID: K1, K3);
  • Agriculture (programme points) — the measurement logic of precision irrigation and the self-regulating elements of the common resource management framework (programme point ID: MG1, MG5);
  • Economy (programme points) — the institutional framework for the allocation of the common resource (programme point ID: G28);
  • Territorial inequality and rural policy (programme points) — the territorial pattern of drinking water outage and the rural public service minimum (programme point ID: TE4, TE1);
  • Foreign policy (programme points) — settling Danube water sharing with regional resilience and preventive diplomacy instruments (programme point ID: KP10, KP15).

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Elinor Ostrom: Governing the Commons

The starting point of Ostrom’s work is that with commonly used resources — pasture, fishing ground, irrigation system, water base — neither transfer into private ownership nor a central ban automatically gives a good solution; the common feature of enduringly functioning systems is rather a few recurring structural elements. In her research she also analyses the centuries-old regulation of Spanish irrigation communities, where the right to water is granted for a fixed period, and the order of rotation is kept track of by the users themselves. The volume places particular emphasis on the pairing of monitoring and graduated sanctions: where the observation of compliance is expensive or missing, the rules are quickly hollowed out, because those who follow them do not see that others comply too; where, on the other hand, observation is cheap and the punishment for the first offence is mild, the system remains stable, because rule-following appears not naive but rational.

Translated to today’s Hungarian situation, this is the lesson of the stadium watering affair. The problem is not that a few facilities breached the ban, but that no measurement and register belongs to the rule — so nothing confirms the rule-follower, while the rule-breaker can invoke an own well or rainwater without risk. MIAK’s proposal 3.3 makes good precisely this missing design element, and it is not by chance that it recommends graduated sanctions: according to Ostrom’s observation, immediate maximal punishment is in practice rarely applied, and precisely for that reason does not deter.

📖 Source: Elinor Ostrom: Governing the Commons — The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

6.4.2 Nicholas Stern: The Economics of Climate Change (The Stern Review)

The Stern Review treats water shortage as one of the most important damage channels of climate change, and analyses in detail how precipitation patterns shift: in some regions flooding appears, in others lasting drought. Presenting the results of the indices used to measure drought — among them the Palmer Drought Severity Index — the report also warns that the models signal changes of differing magnitude, so uncertainty is itself a planning factor. The volume’s guiding thought is nevertheless unambiguous for today’s situation: the size of the damage depends not only on the physical change but on how far a society is able to adapt in advance — for example with drought-tolerant varieties, reservoir capacity or water use regulation.

For Hungary this is relevant because the present fall in water levels is not an individual anomaly but the very case that adaptation planning is made for. The recognition that the Danube’s water level will remain low until October is in itself sufficient reason for the water use regime to be a permanent, seasonally activatable set of rules, rather than an extraordinary measure renegotiated year after year. For the cost of adaptation is highest when it has to be worked out in the middle of the crisis every time.

📖 Source: Nicholas Stern: The Economics of Climate Change — The Stern Review

6.4.3 William Nordhaus – Joseph Boyer: Warming the World

The modelling work of Nordhaus and Boyer is one of the foundational works of the cost-benefit analysis of global climate policy. In their calculations they compare several scenarios, among them a ten-year delay of optimal intervention, and conclude that the net loss of the delay is surprisingly small in the global aggregate — the price of waiting while information is gathered is thus low in the model’s logic. This conclusion is not in itself a justification of inaction; the authors themselves emphasise that the result depends on the construction of the model and on discounting.

According to MIAK this figure is useful in today’s Hungarian debate as a counterpoint. Aggregate global models capture slowly building, irreversible local losses poorly: the die-off of a forty- to fifty-year-old urban tree line cannot be made good “later, with more information”, because a replanted stock reaches a comparable canopy only over decades. The same is true of drying water bases and of the water retention capacity of the soil. The model result about the cheapness of delay therefore does not refute but supports MIAK’s proposal: where the damage is local and irreversible, the decision must not be entrusted to the logic of the global balance sheet. The ministerial admission made at last December’s parliamentary committee hearing — that the building of the large reservoirs was omitted ten years ago — shows precisely the Hungarian bill for that delay.

📖 Source: William Nordhaus – Joseph Boyer: Warming the World — Economic Models of Global Warming

6.5 International comparison

The most direct comparison is the Romanian intervention. The blasting of the Pârjoaia rock and the partial closing off of the Bala branch are a fast, targeted technical answer to a problem of identical origin — the cooling water demand of the Cernavodă nuclear power plant. The Hungarian lesson is twofold. On the one hand it can be seen that a water management intervention is possible even in a short time, if the decision path is clear and the funding is set aside. On the other hand the gap is also visible: the downstream effects of the intervention were not preceded by consultation, and the considerations of local communities — according to the Romanian journalist quoted by Telex there is, for instance, no piped drinking water in the village affected by the blasting — did not appear in the emergency procedure. A drought-period water-sharing protocol would handle precisely these two gaps: prior information and local impact assessment.

In the wider European frame the Rhine’s historic low and the faltering of German inland navigation show that the phenomenon is not a Hungarian peculiarity but a continental one. In West European practice the water use regime promulgated in advance and tied to drought levels — the system of levels that has been operating for years in the French and Spanish systems — is exactly the model that proposal 3.1 recommends: not a new institution, but the conversion of extraordinary measures into a predictable, seasonally activatable set of rules.

Environment and climate

  • K1 — Measurable climate targets
  • K3 — Pollution monitoring

Agriculture

  • MG1 — Precision agriculture programme
  • MG5 — Common resource management framework

Economy

  • G28 — Framework for common resource management

Territorial inequality and rural policy

  • TE4 — Rural public service minimum
  • TE1 — Micro-regional development index

Foreign policy

  • KP10 — Regional resilience building
  • KP15 — Institutionalisation of preventive diplomacy

Proposed new programme point: Classification of heat protection green infrastructure in the order of priority for water use — for the Environment and climate area: the urban woody stock should appear in the order of restriction as a separate category with a protected quota, ahead of recreational water use.

6.7 List of sources

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

Knowledge-base references (books):

  • 📖 Elinor Ostrom: Governing the Commons — The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
  • 📖 Nicholas Stern: The Economics of Climate Change — The Stern Review
  • 📖 William Nordhaus – Joseph Boyer: Warming the World — Economic Models of Global Warming

Note: the local file path of the books does NOT appear in the visible text of the blog — only the author and the title. The file path is an internal matter of the generation process, not the reader’s.

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Environment and climate (programme points; programme point ID: K1, K3)
  • MIAK policy area: Agriculture (programme points; programme point ID: MG1, MG5)
  • MIAK policy area: Territorial inequality and rural policy (programme points; programme point ID: TE4, TE1)
  • MIAK policy area: Foreign policy (programme points; programme point ID: KP10, KP15)
  • MIAK press monitor, 3 August 2026 — topic 2, score: 92/100

Additional public data sources:

  • National Directorate for Water Management — water level, flow rate and groundwater level time series
  • Copernicus European Drought Observatory — combined drought indicator
  • International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) — river basin management reports
  • KSH (Hungarian Central Statistical Office) — municipal water service data

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