Part I — Situation overview

The last still-generating unit of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant came closest to shutdown in the small hours of 5 August 2026. According to Portfolio’s report, at around half past one in the morning the water level of the Danube stood in the vicinity of minus 140 centimetres. By then only a few millimetres separated the system from having to begin the shutdown of the last unit of some 240 megawatts as well. The fall, however, stopped: by morning a rise of one and a half centimetres and by evening of five centimetres was measured. According to Telex’s live report, at seven o’clock on Wednesday morning the water level at Paks was minus 134 centimetres — precisely the level regarded as the limit value for the safe operation of the plant. The Prime Minister stated in the morning that the last turbine is generating stably. He added that the heat peaks on Wednesday and Thursday, and that voluntary consumption reduction is therefore particularly important in the time band between 5 and 10 p.m.

To today, however, belongs another, less spectacular figure. Telex’s economic analysis, quoting energy expert József Turai, reported that on the days of the crisis electricity imports above 4,000 megawatts arrived in the country several times. And this, as the article puts it, is a somewhat larger value than the cross-border capacity, that is, than the maximum transmission capability of the cable system between the neighbouring countries. The same analysis also describes the structural background: since 1992 no substantial conventional power plant development has taken place in Hungary, while since 2010 8,600 megawatts of solar power capacity have been built alongside 330 megawatts of wind. By day this structure exports, in the evening it imports. The load on the system exceeded 6,500 megawatts around half past seven on Tuesday evening, while the Paks Nuclear Power Plant dropped out almost entirely from its role of providing some 40 per cent of domestic electricity generation.

By MIAK’s reading this is the most important lesson of the crisis so far left unsaid. Public discussion over the past ten days has been about domestic generation — how much solar there is, how much Paks gives, whether storage is enough — while the real upper limit of the system is not at home but at the border. If in the evening hours the shortfall is covered by imports, and the quantity of imports reaches or exceeds the nominal transmission capability of the cable system, then the reserve of the Hungarian electricity system is not domestic capacity but the fact that in the neighbouring countries there happens to be sellable electricity. And that latter is not a technical given but a meteorological and political accident — and precisely the kind of factor that cannot be called a reserve in a planning document.

Part II — Literature foundation

Before turning to MIAK’s proposals it is worth setting out the conceptual frame in which the fact that a risk is consistently underestimated for thirty years can be read. The central concept of the work This Time Is Different by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff (Harvard economists, researchers who processed eight centuries of the history of financial crises) is the ’this time is different’ syndrome: decision-makers and market participants recurrently convince themselves that the old risk pattern no longer applies to them, because the technology, the regulation or the circumstances have changed. According to the authors’ data, however, the cycle nevertheless repeats. In the Hungarian case this concerns the risk of relying on imports. The volume 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang (development economist born in South Korea, teaching in Cambridge and London) gives the other side: by his argument a decision logic that gives priority to short-term returns systematically pares back investments with a long payback, and this in the long run destroys precisely that capability on which the survival of the system rests. And the book The Return of Depression Economics by Paul Krugman (American economist, laureate of the Nobel memorial prize for research in trade theory) examines the recurring counter-argument with which public investment is habitually postponed — and which can also be caught in the act in the history of Hungarian energy developments. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

📖 Source: Carmen M. Reinhart – Kenneth S. Rogoff: This Time Is Different; Ha-Joon Chang: 23 dolog, amit nem mondtak el a kapitalizmusról (23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism); Paul Krugman: The Return of Depression Economics

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. None of them is about building a new power line or a new power plant: the first is the publication of existing data, the second a legislative frame for a practice already applied today, and the third the performance of a missing calculation.

3.1 Evening import exposure balance — public daily data (within 30 days)

Today the public sees the system load and domestic generation, but imports only from scattered expert statements. MIAK proposes that within thirty days the transmission system operator should publish a simple, daily updated balance exclusively for the evening peak hour, with three data points: what the net inflow was in that hour in megawatts, how much cross-border capacity is available in the given directions, and, as the quotient of the two, what the utilisation rate was in per cent. This requires no new measurement — the system operator handles these data minute by minute, and reports them to the European transparency platform anyway; the proposal amounts only to their appearing in Hungarian, in a daily breakdown, and also as a single indicator. The reason is that at present no public figure shows the limit that we came closest to in the hardest hours of the crisis. The proposal follows from the G19 radical transparency and the D2 open data programme points. In Reinhart and Rogoff’s frame (see 6.4.1) the function of this indicator is to convert the assumption that ’there will be enough import this time too’ into a figure, and thereby make it contestable.

In the present weeks two demand-side instruments have come up that the legal order does not know. One is the working from home maintained until Friday in public administration and at state-owned companies, whose following was also requested of private sector employers. The other is the proposal of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry that the Saturday working day of 8 August be moved to a Saturday in September. Both are reasonable, and both were born in the form of an ad hoc request. MIAK proposes that by the start of the 2027 planning cycle a narrow frame consisting of a few elements should be put into the legal order for crisis working-time rearrangement: above what threshold value it can be invoked, how many hours in advance it has to be announced, whom it extends to, who bears the additional cost arising, and how the load saved has to be reported afterwards. The legal form matters here: the general rules on working time are at statutory level, that is, they fall within the competence of Parliament; the Government submits the proposal and regulates the details of implementation by decree. The proposal builds on the logic of the FO10 tripartite wage consultation forum — with the involvement of the social partners — and connects to the K7 energy market shock resilience point. The objective is not new curtailment but avoiding that next summer the same request should again arrive unpredictably, a few days in advance.

3.3 Regional simultaneity stress test (within 90 days)

The tacit assumption of domestic security of supply calculations is that when the situation is tight here, at the neighbours there is sellable capacity. The present weeks call this assumption into question from several directions at once: the water level of the Danube is at a record low from Germany to Serbia, the Slovak power plants are also generating in the same heat, and in Romania evening imports are likewise needed. MIAK proposes that within ninety days a public, regional simultaneity calculation should be produced which works through at least one scenario: what happens to the Hungarian evening peak if the heatwave strikes all the neighbouring systems at once, the river water levels are low everywhere, and export capacity available for offer therefore falls simultaneously from every direction. Let the output be two figures: how much import actually remains available, and how much domestic dispatchable reserve would be needed to bridge the hardest hour without curtailment. Programme point G23 prescribes this same logic for the public debt path — historical pattern analysis against the ’this time is different’ illusion — but for security of supply there is no such calculation today.

The three proposals can be strung onto a single principle: what has to be measured and planned is the limit that is the narrowest, not the one that is the most convenient to show. Domestic installed capacity is a large figure and sounds good; the cross-border capacity available in the evening hour is a small figure and uncomfortable. The behaviour of the system is determined by the latter. Chang’s argument (see 6.4.2) adds to this that the failure to make investments with a long payback is not a one-off decision but the accumulation of the repeated application of the short-term yardstick — that is, without changing the yardstick the next cycle leads to the same place.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Economy The daily indicator of import exposure makes the inflow risk priceable, and provides a basis for the argument for investment in domestic dispatchable capacity The publicity of a high utilisation value worsens the country’s bargaining position in regional electricity trading in the short term
Society A rule known in advance for crisis working-time rearrangement makes it predictable for families and employers what they can expect If the frame turns out too wide, the exceptional instrument becomes routine, and the burdens on employees increase
Public administration The regional simultaneity calculation takes security of supply out of the daily dispute and makes it a planning question The inputs of the calculation depend on foreign system operators, so the uncertainty band of the result remains wide

The main question to be weighed is stretched between transparency and bargaining position. If it is public that the Hungarian system operates in the upper range of cross-border capacity in the evening hours, the traders of the neighbouring systems also see this — and knowledge of the scarcity raises the price. This is a real cost. MIAK nevertheless argues for publicity, for two reasons: the data are accessible to market participants at European level anyway, so secrecy primarily shuts out the domestic public, not the traders; and secondly the investment decision — whether domestic dispatchable reserve should be built and how much — can only be taken if the extent of the exposure becomes a figure.

The proposal tips towards the risk side if the frame of working-time rearrangement becomes too easily invocable. In the present situation the voluntary request worked — on Tuesday the load in the evening peak fell short of the planned level by some 500 megawatts, and on earlier days there were also examples of savings of 600–700 megawatts — because it is exceptional and short. If the legal frame does not tie it to a strict threshold and a short duration, the exceptional instrument will become an annual routine, and in the next real crisis there will be nothing left to invoke.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (proposed KPIs)

Four performance indicators (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) are worth tracking in the coming twelve months:

  1. Evening import exposure: net inflow falling on the hours between 7 and 9 p.m. as a percentage of the available cross-border capacity, in a daily breakdown — proposed target: the annual peak value should remain durably below 80 per cent.
  2. Domestic dispatchable reserve in the evening hour: the domestic output callable in the evening peak independently of the weather, in megawatts — proposed target: a measurable, annually rising path.
  3. Regional simultaneity exposure: how many hours there were in the year when import demand arose simultaneously in at least three neighbouring systems — proposed target: annual publication of the value, so that the trend is visible.
  4. Notice time of crisis working-time measures: how many hours before entry into force the measure was announced — proposed target: at least 48 hours, and even in exceptional cases not less than 24 hours.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message in a single sentence: in the hardest hours of the crisis the bottleneck was not domestic capacity but the quantity transmissible across the border, and today nobody measures and nobody plans this limit. Concretely it asks that within thirty days the transmission system operator should publish a daily evening import exposure balance, that by the start of the 2027 planning cycle the narrow frame of crisis working-time rearrangement should be put into the legal order, and that within ninety days the regional simultaneity stress test should be produced. Not one of these requests is about who is responsible for the developments not made over thirty years. The solar build-out is a substantial achievement, the dispatchable and storage layer not built alongside it is a substantial gap, and the responsibility is distributed across several government cycles — MIAK therefore concerns itself not with naming those responsible but with the missing metric.

Two MIAK foundational values are in play in this matter. Transparency, because in the present situation the figure that most determines the risk — evening import exposure — is precisely the one that does not appear in the public debate; transparency is not publishing a lot of data but publishing the one that decides the decision. And data-drivenness, because the assumption that ’there will be enough import’ remained tacit for thirty years and never had to be confronted with a figure — Reinhart and Rogoff describe precisely this mechanism: a risk does not disappear from the fact that it has not occurred for a long time.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The economic spectrum was the only one that described the crisis as a systemic balance sheet. Portfolio followed the evolution of the water level hour by hour, and characterised Tuesday’s turn by the distance measured from the shutdown threshold, not by political evaluation; the same paper published the aggregate of the voluntary commitments — 837 medium and large consumers, altogether more than 600 megawatts of reduction or rescheduling commitments — as well as the chamber of commerce’s proposal on moving the Saturday working day. This spectrum gave the most data from which a policy conclusion can be drawn.

The liberal-left spectrum carried the subject on two separate strands. Telex’s live report arranged the government statements in chronological order, while the paper’s economic analysis — and this was the most substantial press material of the day — turned attention to the long-term structural causes: the conventional power plant developments not made since 1992, the disproportion of solar and wind energy, and the relation between imports exceeding 4,000 megawatts and the cross-border capacity. Telex’s data analysis column clarified in a separate article the conceptual difference between consumption and system load, and showed that Monday’s load evolved as though it had been 3–4 degrees colder than the actual temperature. 444.hu by contrast highlighted the cost side, linking the electricity bill with agricultural damage.

The conservative spectrum sharpened the subject towards the question of government preparedness. Mandiner ran MVM’s statement on power cuts, and the millimetre distance in the small hours, as its lead news, while Magyar Nemzet put the price of unpreparedness at the centre of its headline. The general-interest spectrum carried the impact side: 24.hu the expert estimate of the effect on gross domestic product (GDP) and the role of energy storage, ATV the divided expert judgement of the economic consequences. One framing was missing from all the spectra: not one paper posed the question of what happens if the imports on which the system relies in the evening hours are not available in a regionally simultaneous heatwave.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
The water level of the Danube at Paks (5 August, 7:00) −134 cm National Directorate of Water Management, Telex, 5 August 2026
Water level at the low point in the small hours (5 August, around 1:30) approx. −140 cm Portfolio, 5 August 2026
Safety limit value for the operation of the plant −134 cm National Directorate of Water Management, Telex, 5 August 2026
Rise after the low point in the small hours +1.5 cm by morning, +5 cm by evening Portfolio, 5 August 2026
The output of the last still-generating unit approx. 240 MW (one of the eight) Portfolio, 5 August 2026
Paks’s share of domestic electricity generation approx. 40% Telex, 4 August 2026
System load at Tuesday’s evening peak more than 6,500 MW Telex, 4 August 2026
Shortfall from the planned level of the evening peak (Tuesday) approx. 500 MW Portfolio, 5 August 2026
Saving on earlier days 600–700 MW Portfolio, 5 August 2026
Medium and large consumers making a voluntary commitment 837 participants, altogether more than 600 MW Portfolio, 5 August 2026
Peak-period electricity imports on the days of the crisis above 4,000 MW several times statement of József Turai, Telex, 4 August 2026
The relation of the import peak to the cross-border capacity somewhat exceeded it statement of József Turai, Telex, 4 August 2026
Domestic installed solar power capacity 8,600 MW Telex, 4 August 2026
Domestic installed wind power capacity 330 MW Telex, 4 August 2026
The last substantial period of conventional power plant development a few individual projects since 1992 statement of József Turai, Telex, 4 August 2026
Fall in water consumption over recent days 9% statement of László Gajdos, Telex, 5 August 2026
Critical daily period 5–10 p.m. statement of Péter Magyar, Telex, 5 August 2026
Daily temperature peak (5 August) 37–42 °C HungaroMet, Telex, 5 August 2026

A single connection deserves to be highlighted. The 8,600 megawatts of solar capacity covers roughly half of the daytime hours — from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon — from a domestic source, but from six in the evening its generation runs out fast. This diurnal structure is not in itself a fault; what becomes a risk is that the system bridges the evening gap that arises not with domestic dispatchable reserve but with inflow, and moreover at the upper limit of the cable system. The domestic capacity debate is therefore misleading: the largest single item on which the Hungarian evening supply relies does not appear in the domestic capacity balance, because it does not stand in Hungary.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Economy (programme points) — the radical transparency of system data, the preparedness plan for the energy price shock and the frame of pattern analysis against the ’this time is different’ illusion (programme point ID: G19, G25, G23, G9);
  • Environment and climate (programme points) — energy market shock resilience and the dispatchable pillar of the energy transition plan (programme point ID: K7, K2);
  • Employment policy (programme points) — the social partner consultation of crisis working-time rearrangement (programme point ID: FO10);
  • Public administration and e-government (programme points) — the audit of the organisational routines of crisis decisions (programme point ID: KI11);
  • Digitalisation and AI regulation (programme points) — the machine-readable publication of hourly system and import data (programme point ID: D2, D9).

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Carmen M. Reinhart – Kenneth S. Rogoff: This Time Is Different

The pair of authors processed eight centuries of debt and financial crises, and the central thesis of the volume is not an economic mechanism but a pattern of decision-maker behaviour. In their formulation the view today is that ‘countries and creditors alike have learned from their mistakes’, and that because of better macroeconomic policy and more circumspect lending practice the world is hardly likely to see another great wave of defaults. The authors consider this self-reassurance premature, and sum up the lesson thus:

“Technology has changed, the height of humans has changed, and fashions have changed. Yet the ability of governments and investors to delude themselves, giving rise to periodic bouts of euphoria that usually end in tears, seems to have remained a constant.”

In this frame the import exposure of the Hungarian electricity system is not a technical but an epistemological question. Evening supply built on inflow worked for thirty years, because in the neighbouring systems there was always sellable capacity — and every single undisturbed year reinforced the assumption that this will be so in the future too. Reinhart and Rogoff’s claim is precisely that long undisturbedness is not proof of the absence of risk but is often the prelude to the risk no longer being measured by anyone. Proposal 3.1 therefore asks not for new regulation but for a figure: the daily indicator of evening import exposure is the instrument that converts the tacit assumption into a verifiable claim.

📖 Source: Carmen M. Reinhart – Kenneth S. Rogoff: This Time Is Different — Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

6.4.2 Ha-Joon Chang: 23 dolog, amit nem mondtak el a kapitalizmusról (23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism)

One of the most fully expounded arguments of Chang’s volume is that a decision logic rewarding short-term returns destroys in the long run precisely that capability from which the income derives. According to his analysis, the immediate payout of the largest possible share of profit reduces the undistributed resource available for investment, and ‘in the short run the fall in investment may not be perceptible, but in the long run a technology unable to keep pace with development endangers the very survival of the company’. The author shows in the same place that the rise in the profit share relative to national income in the United States was not accompanied by a rise in the investment rate — the share of investment fell from 20.5 per cent in the 1980s to 18.7 per cent between 1990 and 2009.

This mechanism was written for a corporate environment, but it is directly transferable to the Hungarian history of energy development. In the domestic electricity system over the past three decades what was built was the type of investment whose payback period is short and whose risk is well calculable — such as the solar power plant — and what was not made was the type whose payback is long and hard to recover: the pumped storage reservoir, the dispatchable reserve capacity, the expansion of cross-border lines. Chang’s argument warns that this was not an individual error but the consequence of the yardstick. MIAK derives from this that without changing the yardstick — that is, if planning continues to measure installed capacity and not the reserve of the hardest hour — the next cycle arrives at the same place.

📖 Source: Ha-Joon Chang: 23 dolog, amit nem mondtak el a kapitalizmusról (23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism)

6.4.3 Paul Krugman: The Return of Depression Economics

Krugman’s volume is about the political economy of crisis management, and treats separately the situation in which the right answer is known but decision-making nevertheless delays. In his proposal concerning the period after 2008 the author argues that demand stimulus has to be realised not in the form of tax rebates but as lasting state expenditure, and places the emphasis expressly on roads, bridges and other infrastructure; he then immediately records himself that ’the usual objection to public spending as stimulus’ is the slowness of implementation. The structural lesson of the book is that the cost of postponed public investment does not disappear, it is only shifted to a later, forced point in time, where it is already more expensive.

The Hungarian case is an illustration of this. The cost of system-level developments — reservoir, barrage, reserve capacity — seemed too large in every cycle over the past three decades, and could be postponed in every cycle, because in the given summer the system was still working. This summer’s bill, by contrast, arrives not as an investment but as an operating item: expensive imported electricity, lost industrial output and a measurable fall in gross domestic product (GDP). MIAK does not derive from this that every postponed investment has to be realised immediately — but that the cost of the postponement also has to be made into a figure. The regional simultaneity calculation of proposal 3.3 gives precisely this: it shows how much domestic reserve is missing, and thereby makes the price of the investment comparable with the price of the postponement.

📖 Source: Paul Krugman: The Return of Depression Economics

6.5 International comparison

The regional picture shows the same thing in all three directions. The water level of the Danube is at a record low alike from the German and Austrian upper reaches to the Serbian and Bulgarian lower reaches, which not only obstructs navigation but also limits the cooling of the thermal power plants along the river. In Slovakia the Gabčíkovo hydroelectric plant and nuclear capacity work together during the heat dome, and the country sells a significant quantity to Hungary — according to Telex’s analysis at a significant premium. This premium is not an abuse but the price of scarcity: on the regional market several systems are seeking the same capacity in the same hour.

The lesson for Hungarian planning is that neighbourly assistance cannot be regarded as a reserve, only as a supplement. Regional interconnection is in itself valuable — in average weather it makes supply cheaper and more secure — but it weakens most precisely in the situation for which the reserve has to be planned: in a simultaneous extreme affecting a wide area. This difference between the average and the extreme situation is what proposal 3.3 would make into a figure. There is a model for this in European practice: the coordinated security of supply assessments examine precisely what happens if the neighbouring systems are tight at the same time — Hungarian planning does not today represent this aspect in a separate, public calculation.

Economy

  • G19 — Radical transparency in economic decision-making
  • G23 — Public debt sustainability framework
  • G25 — Energy price shock preparedness plan
  • G9 — Strategic industrial policy

Environment and climate

  • K7 — Energy market shock resilience
  • K2 — Energy transition plan
  • K1 — Measurable climate targets

Employment policy

  • FO10 — Wage bargaining modernisation, tripartite wage consultation forum
  • FO7 — Countercyclical employment fund

Public administration and e-government

  • KI11 — Organisational behaviour audit, Allison framework

Digitalisation and AI regulation

  • D2 — Open data programme
  • D9 — Data-driven public policy decision support system

Proposed new programme point: Cross-border capacity exposure indicator and regional simultaneity stress test — for the Environment and climate area, as a supplement to the K7 energy market shock resilience point.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 5 August 2026 — topic 1):

Knowledge-base references (books):

  • 📖 Carmen M. Reinhart – Kenneth S. Rogoff: This Time Is Different — Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
  • 📖 Ha-Joon Chang: 23 dolog, amit nem mondtak el a kapitalizmusról (23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism)
  • 📖 Paul Krugman: The Return of Depression Economics

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: Economy (programme points; programme point ID: G19, G23, G25)
  • MIAK policy area: Environment and climate (programme points; programme point ID: K7, K2)
  • MIAK policy area: Employment policy (programme points; programme point ID: FO10)
  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (programme points; programme point ID: KI11)
  • MIAK press monitor, 5 August 2026 — topic 1, score: 95/100

Additional public data sources:

  • National Directorate of Water Management — Danube water level time series, Paks
  • MAVIR — daily system load and schedule data
  • ENTSO-E Transparency Platform — cross-border capacity and physical flows
  • HungaroMet — temperature peak values and warning archive

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