Monday 3 August 2026 – Sunday 9 August 2026 · 2026 week 32

The week in one sentence

In seven days a complete crisis cycle ran its course — from the first working day without Paks, through the development programme worth 868 billion forints, to the lifting of the restrictions — while on the water side precisely the opposite came to light: the drought is not an episode but a system state settling in for months.

MIAK’s weekly reflection

This week put the exit side of crisis management to the test. The question of the past weeks was how a country enters a security-of-supply crisis; this week the question became how it leaves one. Introducing the curtailment required a decree, a public order of priority, promulgation. Lifting the curtailment, by contrast, took no more than an announcement. The same was visible in the phasing out of the voluntary saving regime: on entry the commitments, the megawatts saved and the list of participating firms were public. On exit, however, it was not disclosed which measured parameter had reached the level at which curtailment is no longer justified. MIAK’s yardstick here is independent of which side holds power: the exit criterion is just as much a legal object as the entry criterion. A rule that is written down only for the way in does not protect the next time round, it produces uncertainty — because it will not be clear whether the measure was a function of the measured state or of political convenience.

The other lesson of the week follows from the differing nature of the two dominant threads. The energy side traversed the full arc of a crisis in a week, whereas the water side moved in exactly the opposite direction: over the course of the week more and more data showed that planning has to be done not for weeks but for months, and that the problem is not even only the quantity of water. The deepening of the riverbed, the dwindling flow, the loss of navigability and the unilateral interventions of the neighbours together mean that the Danube is not a domestic stock but a shared resource — with no enforceable sharing regime. As long as there is no order of allocation fixed in law about what takes priority in scarcity — drinking water, health and social care institutions, food production, industrial cooling, recreation — the order of priority will have to be renegotiated every summer. And compliance remains a question of moralising, not of rule. The difference between the two, from MIAK’s point of view, is that an investment response worth 868 billion forints has now been born for the energy crisis, whereas for the water side there are so far institutional announcements and partial measures, not a programme that has been compared and equipped with output indicators.

The third, public-law thread ran independently of all this, and at the end of the week moved into first place. From Monday’s presidential crisis consultation to Sunday’s announcement of the nomination, a process ran its course which has on one side the substantive content of the office of President of the Republic, and on the other the procedural quality of filling it. MIAK’s position here is consistent: after a change of government the replacement of personnel is legitimate, and the policy question is one of guarantees and predictability — a public procedural order, a yardstick known in advance, and a reading of the presidential role that follows not the convenience of the given majority but the competences of the office. This week also showed that when a crisis occupies the attention of the public, the big institutional decisions do not pause — there are simply fewer eyes on them.

The week’s main threads

1. The full arc of the energy crisis: from a Monday without Paks to the lifting of the restrictions

This was the strongest thread of the week: it featured in the top 10 on all seven press monitor days, five times in first place. On Monday the question was whether the announced 700 megawatts of voluntary saving could be authenticated — the government invoked that figure to postpone the disconnection of large industrial consumers, while according to one energy analyst the framing of the load data presented was distorted. On Tuesday the system turned back at the threshold of a complete shutdown, and it turned out that at midday solar energy was holding the system, whereas in the evening the reserve was tight because of the lack of storage capacity. On Wednesday the import side came into focus: cross-border capacity is the real upper limit of the crisis, and regional simultaneity narrows it further. On Thursday the first system-level response appeared, an energy development programme worth 868 billion forints, without output indicators. On Friday grid development and a wind farm tender were launched from EU funds, consumption curtailment was lifted, and the question of the retail electricity market opened up. For the weekend the conditions for restarting Paks and the phasing out of the voluntary regime remained on the agenda — and the future of utility price policy remained an open question.

Detailed analyses: Seven hundred megawatts — but who authenticates the figure? Crisis data as the legitimation reserve of crisis management (MIAK blog, 3 August 2026) · At midday the sun held the system, in the evening luck did — the structural lesson of the Paks shutdown (MIAK blog, 4 August 2026) · Four thousand megawatts at the border — import dependence as the real upper limit of the crisis (MIAK blog, 5 August 2026) · 868 billion forints in the middle of the crisis — the programme that still has no indicator (MIAK blog, 6 August 2026) · A window opening in a crisis — opening up the electricity market is the right direction, but its sequence is being decided now (MIAK blog, 6 August 2026) · From Friday there is no curtailment — but what was the yardstick for the exit? (MIAK blog, 7 August 2026)

2. The reclassification of the drought: from an event into a system state settling in for months

The water thread too was in the top 10 on all seven days, and it grew steadily worse over the course of the week. On Monday the Danube at Paks was one centimetre from the shutdown threshold, and the forecast appeared according to which the water level may keep falling until October — it was this sentence that reclassified the story from an event into a system state. On Tuesday an institutional response arrived: the creation of an integrated water science centre was announced, fourteen years after the abolition of its predecessor. By Thursday the number of municipalities under water restriction had risen to 629, the armed forces were transporting drinking water, and Hungary rejected a Slovak request on flow rates. On Friday the barrage debate reopened as well, and the thread became a foreign policy one: Slovak and Romanian reactions, unilateral riverbed interventions. By the weekend it had become clear that the quantity of water is not the only problem: the deepening of the riverbed is an independent, lasting cause, which also worsens next year’s water stock. Meanwhile a fish kill and the fencing off of a gasworks contamination came onto the agenda. MIAK’s position here was the same on every day of the week: public water balance data, an order of allocation fixed in law, and treatment of the Danube as a shared, not a domestic, resource.

Detailed analyses: The Danube may keep falling until October — water restriction has to be written not for days but for months (MIAK blog, 3 August 2026) · A new water science centre fourteen years after the old one was closed — what should go into the founding decision? (MIAK blog, 4 August 2026) · 400 cubic metres per second — the Danube is not a domestic stock, and this has to be stated in a treaty (MIAK blog, 6 August 2026) · It is not only that there is little water: the deepening riverbed and the absence of an order of allocation are also causes of the crisis (MIAK blog, 9 August 2026)

3. The preparation of the presidential election — the content of the office and the yardstick of the procedure

This thread was present on five days of the week, and by Sunday it had moved into first place. On Monday the news was still the crisis consultation of the head of state in office: he summoned the prime minister and all the parliamentary group leaders to the Sándor Palace, which was the first real test of the coordinative role of the President of the Republic. Here MIAK placed precision about competences at the centre: the president is not a governmental actor, cannot instruct the Government, and most of his acts require the countersignature of the prime minister — the consultation was therefore an act of creating publicity and of requesting information, not one of direction. On Thursday it emerged that the National Assembly would elect a head of state the following Tuesday, and a “there is no vacancy” legal position appeared, as did the boycott announcement of the largest opposition parliamentary group. On Friday a single candidate took shape and a submission to the Constitutional Court was prepared calling the validity of the election into question. On Saturday the parliamentary group decided on three names, and on Sunday the name of the candidate was made public: András Baka, whose name is itself a public-law reference point through a human rights court case. MIAK’s yardstick was the same in both posts: the question is not the curriculum vitae but the predictability of the procedure, and what concrete procedural commitments the elected president makes on the exercise of his competences.

Detailed analyses: On Tuesday the National Assembly elects a head of state — it is the yardstick of the procedure that is being decided now, not the person (MIAK blog, 7 August 2026) · András Baka is the presidential candidate: the question is not the curriculum vitae but what the president undertakes to do (MIAK blog, 9 August 2026)

What we did not publish separately

Under the trigger-based publication philosophy MIAK does not write a stand-alone post about every top topic — but it sees them and keeps track of them. This week the following were left without a separate analysis, typically because of the daily quota limit or the earlier saturation of the topic:

  • Cyberattack against the State Treasury and the payment systems (MIAK policy area: Digitalisation and AI regulation) — it came up on two days of the week, and on the second occasion a disturbance of family support payments was already attached to it; this is an attack on critical state infrastructure, where for MIAK the yardstick is not the identification of the attacker but the fulfilment of the notification, information and business continuity obligations.
  • The procedural order of terminated and reviewed state contracts (MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy) — it surfaced on four days of the week: withdrawal from an office deal worth 300 billion forints, the termination of communications and event organisation contracts, dismissals of executives and asset recovery announcements; the review is legitimate, but the procedure also has to stand up before a court, otherwise recovery turns into compensation.
  • The reform package for the lower primary grades (MIAK policy area: Education) — 35-minute lessons, the regulation of homework, story reading every day and the reshaping of mid-level education governance; a change of substantive pedagogical content, to which no public impact assessment and measurement plan yet belongs, even though it goes live on 1 September.
  • The debt path warning and the slowing wage convergence (MIAK policy area: Economy) — according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) public debt may double by 2045, while a domestic economic research institute concluded that in price level Hungary has already caught up with the EU average, but in wages it lags behind it; these two data together are the real frame of the autumn budget debate.
  • The public health and labour law aspect of heat stress (MIAK policy area: Healthcare) — during the week a red alert was issued for almost the entire country, and a European mortality peak was reported; both the workplace minimum rules of heat protection and the regular, comparable publication of excess mortality are missing.
  • Drone incidents and hybrid threat in the region (MIAK policy area: Defence) — it came up on two days of the week: drones with explosive devices at a German airport and near a Bulgarian gas pipeline; the domestic lesson is not the scale of the threat but whether there is a public detection and information protocol in the vicinity of critical infrastructure.
  • The restart of tripartite wage coordination (MIAK policy area: Employment policy and the labour market) — consultation between the government, the employers and the trade unions got under way; the question is whether this will be a formal consultation or an actual, data-based framework agreement on wage policy.
  • The pricing of land purchases for large projects (MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy) — data appeared on overpricing by an order of magnitude in the land purchases of a large state investment; a separate analysis is justified if an official finding or procedure is born.

Policy-area focus — what the press touched on most

The distribution by policy area of the week’s 70 top topics (by occurrences):

Policy area Occurrences in the weekly top 10
Public administration and e-government 34
Economy 29
Transparency and anti-corruption policy 27
Environment and climate 22
Foreign policy 16
Justice 14

All seven days’ press monitors were prepared this week, so the weekly picture is balanced. Of the 70 top topics 63 contained a trigger event — this is the densest week of the present series.

This is a weekly summary. The in-depth analyses of individual topics can be found in the daily posts.

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