Part I — Situation overview

On Friday 7 August 2026 the Senate of the United States adopted, with bipartisan support, the sanctions package against Russia which makes it possible to impose a hundred per cent tariff on countries that buy Russian crude oil and natural gas. The legislation was initiated back in 2025 by Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who died suddenly in July 2026 following a trip to Kyiv; the law bears his name. The procedure is not yet closed: the final vote is expected at the beginning of September, after which the proposal goes before the House of Representatives. The part of the package on secondary tariffs targets primarily the largest buyers of Russian energy carriers, China and India, but it may also extend to the largest European buyers — among them Hungary and Slovakia.

There are two mutually independent mitigating elements in the law. One is the individual exemption power of the US president: the proposal authorises the president to grant exemptions to allied or diplomatically cooperating countries, and the measures defined in the legislation cease to apply immediately if Russia and Ukraine conclude peace or a ceasefire. The other — and from the Hungarian point of view this is the more important one — is a built-in exception for those European countries which account for less than 15 per cent of Russian natural gas exports and demonstrably take substantive steps to reduce their dependence. These two conditions have to be met together: the share in itself is not enough, nor is the demonstrable reduction path.

Hungarian diplomacy already began handling the matter in July: Márton Hajdu, the governing-party chair of the foreign affairs committee of Parliament, negotiated in Washington about, among other things, the hundred per cent sanctions in prospect not applying to Hungary. In the background the direct escalation of the war is under way: over the weekend Russian missile and drone attacks hit 12 Ukrainian regions — at a press conference in Belgrade the Ukrainian president spoke of 13 dead and 77 wounded — and the Ukrainian army struck two Russian oil refineries, at Ilsky and Syzran. This duality matters for the Hungarian assessment: the risk of Russian procurement today is not only political and commercial but also physical, because refinery capacity itself has become a target.

MIAK’s reading: in domestic public debate the topic appears as a question of sovereignty, whereas its structure is one of trade policy. The stake is not how much cheaper the Russian energy carrier is, but whether this difference is in proportion to the export volume and employment that may fall under a secondary tariff. This question can be decided exclusively with figures, and the figures are not public today. The exception rule of the law moreover asks for exactly the type of proof — a demonstrable reduction path — to which a well-documented substitution timetable is the best answer. Diplomatic influence is important, but in itself it cannot make up for that whose absence is visible at the negotiating table as well.

Part II — Literature foundation

Three complementary frames are needed to interpret the situation. The first answers the question of when an adopted law becomes an actual measure. The work Essence of Decision by Graham Allison (American political scientist, founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School) and Philip Zelikow (American jurist-historian) shows, through the analysis of the Cuban missile crisis, that a state’s foreign policy step can be understood in three ways: as the decision of a unitary, goal-rational actor, as the output of the fixed procedures of large organisations, or as the result of bargaining between actors within government. The three readings generally give different predictions. The second frame is the EU embedding: the global strategy of the European Union treats energy security explicitly as a question of strategic autonomy and of mutual assistance between member states, that is, an individual member-state request for exemption is also assessed in an EU context. The third frame is the quantitative one: the trade policy materials of the OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development of the developed economies) show that the actual tariff level moves quickly and with large amplitude, and that trade policy uncertainty in itself, without the tariff actually being imposed, holds back investment. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

📖 Source: Graham Allison – Philip Zelikow: Essence of Decision; European Union: Shared Vision, Common Action — A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy; OECD: Economic Outlook

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. All three can be carried out before the vote in the House of Representatives, and all three are useful in themselves, regardless of whether the law finally enters into force.

3.1 Publication of a public exposure balance sheet (by 15 September 2026)

MIAK proposes that the ministries responsible for economic policy and for external economic affairs publish, before the vote in the House of Representatives, a one-page, quantified balance sheet. On one side stands the estimated annual saving on crude oil and natural gas procurement from Russian sources compared with alternative sources, in forints, together with the methodology of the estimate. On the other side stands the value of Hungarian goods exports to the United States broken down by sector, together with the employment linked to it — and further, an estimate of what share a hundred per cent tariff would render unsellable. The balance sheet also has to contain a third column: the list of those sectors whose American exports are affected indirectly, through the supplier chain. This document is the minimum condition of the decision, and its absence is itself policy news: the present debate can be conducted in the language of sovereignty because there is nothing to compare against. The methodological frame of its preparation is the G20 impact assessment system, and on the content side it builds on the database of the G25 energy price shock preparedness plan. The connection described by the OECD (see 6.4.3) is directly applicable here: uncertainty causes a cost even before the tariff is introduced, so clarification in itself brings a benefit.

3.2 A verifiable substitution timetable for the exemption criterion (a version ready for submission by 31 October 2026)

The exception rule of the law asks not for a declaration of intent but for demonstrable steps. MIAK’s proposal is therefore the preparation of a timetable containing date-bound milestones: when and with what capacity alternative transport routes come on stream, at what pace domestic production and renewable feed-in grow, by how much the share of natural gas and crude oil from Russian sources falls quarter by quarter, and which authority certifies which indicator. It has to meet two requirements. The first is that the milestones be verifiable after the fact — the share figure has to be retrievable from an EU statistical source as well. The second is that the timetable also contain a fallback scenario for the case where a route drops out. This timetable satisfies at once the requirement of the KP22 exit strategy planning protocol — under which every long-term energy contract must have a pre-prepared exit scenario — and the short-term slice of the K2 energy transition plan. It is important that the document be written not for obtaining the exemption but for improving security of supply; if it is prepared only for the former, the milestones will be soft, and it will lose precisely its verifiability.

3.3 An issue-based European coalition for a uniform interpretation of the exception rule (in autumn 2026)

Hungary is not alone in this situation: the text of the law affects several European buyers, and the interpretation of the 15 per cent share threshold and of the phrase “demonstrable steps” is the same question for everyone concerned. MIAK proposes that Hungary initiate consultation with the member states concerned and with the European Commission on a uniform, pre-fixed interpretation of the exception rule, and on which dataset of the EU statistical system should serve as the basis for demonstrating the share. This is a typical case of KP17 issue-based coalition building: it is not about a lasting alliance but about a single, well-delimited question in which interests coincide. The approach is moreover in line with the mutual assistance logic of the EU strategic documents (see 6.4.2), and it forestalls the situation in which every member state bargains separately and bilateral agreements are concluded on differing terms. On the Hungarian side this is the practical application of KP11 strategic balance policy: the unilateral Washington negotiation and EU coordination are not alternatives but mutually reinforcing instruments.

The three proposals are bound together by a single principle: exposure can be reduced not by argument but by data and a timetable. The exposure balance sheet says how much is at stake; the substitution timetable says what the way out is, and serves as proof as well; and European coordination ensures that the proof is required of everyone in the same way. In the frame of Allison and Zelikow (see 6.4.1) all three serve the same purpose: they do not seek to influence the Washington decision but to prepare for the fact that the decision may be born through several independent channels, and none of these channels can be predicted with high confidence.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Economy On the basis of the public exposure balance sheet the decision becomes a cost comparison, and investor uncertainty falls The balance sheet may make public those sectors which are the most vulnerable — this may weaken the negotiating position if its timing is wrong
External relations The verifiable timetable is strong proof for the application of the exception rule, and places the bilateral negotiation on a factual basis If the milestones of the timetable are missed, the document may later be turned into evidence against itself
Environment and energy The substitution path coincides with the goals of the energy transition, so constraint and policy intent point in the same direction Rapid substitution may mean more expensive procurement in the short term, which may also leave a mark on household and industrial energy prices
Society For workers in export-dependent sectors it becomes visible what is at stake, and this also helps preparation The publicity of the figures may generate anxiety in regions where a single exporting plant provides a large part of employment

The most important question of judgement is how far the entire preparation may be based on obtaining the exemption. Under its text the law ceases to apply immediately if Russia and Ukraine conclude peace or a ceasefire, and the US president may also grant individual exemptions — that is, there are several paths along which the threat dissipates independently of Hungarian steps. This structure carries a strong temptation to wait. Waiting, however, is a bad strategy for two reasons. On the one hand trade policy uncertainty has a growth cost in itself, so doing nothing is not free either. On the other hand the substitution timetable is a document which is useful regardless of the exemption: security of supply and the energy transition ask for the same thing. The proposed steps therefore do not become superfluous even if the law finally stalls in the House of Representatives — this is the main argument for doing the work before the September vote.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (proposed KPIs)

Four proposed performance indicators (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) from which, in half a year and in a year and a half, it will be visible whether preparedness has improved:

  • Whether the public exposure balance sheet appeared by 15 September 2026, with a sectoral breakdown and the methodology of the estimate. A binary, document-based indicator.
  • The share of natural gas and crude oil from Russian sources in total domestic procurement, quarterly, retrievable from an EU statistical source. This is the only indicator that is also directly relevant from the point of view of the exception rule of the law.
  • The value and annual change of Hungarian goods exports to the United States, compared with the EU average. If the Hungarian figure falls faster than the average during the debate on the law, that measures the independent cost of uncertainty.
  • Whether a written, common interpretation of the application of the exception rule was established between the European member states concerned by the first quarter of 2027.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s message: the debate about Russian energy procurement has to be lifted out of the language of sovereignty, and a simple comparison put in its place — how much we save, and how much export volume is at stake. Concretely, it asks the government to make the exposure balance sheet public before the September American vote, to prepare by the end of October the date-bound, verifiable substitution timetable, and to initiate consultation with the European member states concerned on a uniform interpretation of the exception rule. And of the public it asks that alongside the news of negotiations it demand these two documents — because their existence is verifiable, whereas the success of a negotiation only becomes clear after the fact.

Two MIAK foundational values move in this matter. Data-drivenness, because the structure of the present debate is a typical example of how a question decidable with figures becomes a question of identity: as long as there is no public balance sheet of how large the saving is and how large the export at risk, positions cannot be compared, only professed. And accountability, because a date-bound, verifiable timetable speaks to two addressees at once: to the foreign partner as proof, and to the domestic public as a yardstick against which the performance of the coming years can be measured. Such a document binds the present government as well as every subsequent one — that is what gives it its value.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The liberal-left band put Hungarian involvement at the centre of the story, but with differing depth. Telex handled the Senate vote in one piece together with the day’s war events — alongside the sanctions decision it also reported on the strikes in Ukraine and on the attacks on Russian refineries — and quoted precisely the two mitigating elements of the law: the possibility of presidential exemption and the peace or ceasefire clause. 444.hu went further than this, and this is the most detailed treatment in the day’s selection: it explicitly named the built-in exception relating to a share of less than 15 per cent and to demonstrable reduction of dependence, and recalled that the chair of the Hungarian foreign affairs committee had negotiated in Washington in July about the exemption. This detail essentially did not appear in the other bands, even though from a policy point of view it is the most essential element — the exception rule is the only point at which the outcome can be influenced at all by a Hungarian step.

The economic band concentrated on the Hungarian and regional consequences. Portfolio carried at once a forward-looking analysis of the expected tariffs and a longer, comparative piece on what a country’s separation from Russian energy dependence looks like in practice; in a third piece it proposed a rethinking of Central and Eastern European energy reflexes. This framing comes closest to what the present analysis also proposes, because it treats the question as a procurement structure, not as a symbolic issue.

The conservative band on this day dealt not with the sanctions package itself but with the change of direction in Hungarian foreign policy. Mandiner published two pieces on the personnel and doctrinal changes in the foreign affairs apparatus and in the Hungarian Institute of Foreign Affairs, placing at the centre the sentence that the place of interest representation is the European Union. On the sanctions law as an independent topic the band brought no substantive analysis on this day — this is a gap, because the question of energy procurement traditionally features on this band’s own agenda. In the public-affairs band the news appeared rather in an international context: HVG gave the outlook for the European year as background through an interview with Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, without concrete tariff figures. In summary: the legal details of the law were worked out solely by the liberal-left band, the economic consequences by the economic band, and the conservative band followed the change in the Hungarian foreign policy institutional system — the Hungarian tasks needed for the exception rule were named by none of the bands.

6.2 Facts and data

Item Value Source
Day of the Senate vote Friday 7 August 2026, with bipartisan support Telex, 444.hu, 8 August 2026
The tariff level in prospect 100 per cent, as a secondary tariff Telex, 444.hu, 8 August 2026
Initiator of the law Republican senator Lindsey Graham (2025), who died in July 2026 444.hu, 8 August 2026
The further procedure final vote expected at the beginning of September, after which it goes before the House of Representatives Telex, 8 August 2026
Primary target countries China and India Telex, 444.hu, 8 August 2026
European buyers affected Hungary and Slovakia 444.hu, 8 August 2026
Presidential exemption may be granted by individual decision to allied or diplomatically cooperating countries 444.hu, 8 August 2026
Automatic lapse peace or ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine Telex, 8 August 2026
Built-in European exception countries accounting for less than 15 per cent of Russian natural gas exports and demonstrably reducing their dependence 444.hu, 8 August 2026
Hungarian preparatory negotiation July 2026, Washington — the chair of the foreign affairs committee of Parliament 444.hu, 8 August 2026
Toll of the night strike in Ukraine 12 regions affected, 13 dead, 77 wounded Telex, 8 August 2026
Ukrainian deep strikes the Ilsky and Syzran oil refineries Telex, 8 August 2026

Two elements deserve separate attention. One is the 15 per cent threshold: this relates not to the energy balance of the country concerned but to its share of Russian natural gas exports — that is, a smaller country may be below the threshold even if it covers a large part of its own consumption from Russian sources. The second condition of the exception, demonstrable reduction, is therefore the real filter, and this is what can be prepared for on the Hungarian side with a document. The other is the schedule: after the Senate vote two steps remain — the final vote and the House of Representatives procedure — so the beginning of September gives a realistic deadline for preparation. This is the time window in which the proposed exposure balance sheet can be prepared.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Foreign policy (programme points) — the requirement of an exit scenario, the issue-based European coalition and the assessment of room for manoeuvre within the alliance (programme point ID: KP4, KP11, KP17, KP22, KP23);
  • Economy (programme points) — the methodology of the exposure balance sheet and the database of energy price shock preparedness (programme point ID: G20, G25);
  • Environment and climate (programme points) — the coincidence of the substitution timetable with the goals of the energy transition and shock resilience (programme point ID: K2, K7).

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow: Essence of Decision

The basic question of the volume is what it means to “explain” a state’s foreign policy step, and its answer is that the explanation always follows from a tacitly chosen model. The first model treats the state as a unitary, goal-rational actor: in this reading the purpose of the law is to reduce Russia’s revenues, Hungarian involvement is incidental, and the granting of the exemption will be a matter of simple cost-benefit calculation. The second model attends to the fixed procedures of large organisations: the authors show in detail that huge apparatuses operate according to established routines, and that these routines determine not only the speed of implementation but the very range of available options — in this reading the decisive question is not political intent but the procedure in which the American trade and financial apparatus is able to handle individual exemptions at all. The third model focuses on the bargaining of actors within government: here the outcome is not a single decision but the result of negotiation between several offices and political actors with differing interests, which may change even as it goes along. For Hungarian preparation the lesson is that one must not build exclusively on any one model. A purely political-level negotiation assumes the first model; if, however, the second or the third describes the situation better, then documented proof that fits into a procedure — that is, a verifiable substitution timetable — is worth far more than good relations. In MIAK’s knowledge base this volume is a source from which verbatim quotation cannot be used; the summary above is therefore entirely paraphrase.

📖 Source: Graham Allison – Philip Zelikow: Essence of Decision

6.4.2 European Union: EU Global Strategy

The Union’s global strategy treats energy security not as an isolated procurement question but as part of strategic autonomy. In the document’s formulation “terrorism, hybrid threats, economic volatility, climate change and energy insecurity endanger our people and territory”, and from this it derives that “an appropriate level of ambition and strategic autonomy is important for Europe” — then it explicitly names energy among the areas where efforts have to be stepped up. The text adds that member states also have to put into practice their commitments on mutual assistance and solidarity. Translated to the present situation this means two things. On the one hand a member-state request for exemption does not take place in an EU vacuum: if the member states concerned agree separately, on differing terms, that weakens the common energy policy position. On the other hand the text of the strategy is itself a support for the Hungarian argument, because it fixes the reduction of energy dependence as an EU goal — that is, the substitution timetable is proof not only in the American direction but also, in the EU direction, evidence of alignment with the expected path. This connection justifies the issue-based coalition proposed in point 3.3.

📖 Source: European Union: Shared Vision, Common Action — A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy

6.4.3 OECD: Economic Outlook

The OECD’s trade policy analyses make two observations directly applicable to the present situation. The first is the mobility of tariff levels: the publication documents in detail how actual US tariff levels changed by product and country group within a short time — for example that tariffs introduced under extraordinary economic powers were abolished and replaced by a ten per cent tariff covering all imports, with the exception of sectoral tariffs and exempted products. The lesson is that an announced tariff level and the actually applied tariff level are two different things, and that months and significant differences may lie between the two — that is, Hungarian planning has to think in scenarios, not in a single figure. The second observation is the independent cost of uncertainty: discussing growth prospects, the analysis lists more moderate actual tariff levels among the factors supporting growth, which conversely means that a higher and unpredictable tariff level in itself holds back economic activity. This is the connection which makes the exposure balance sheet proposed in point 3.1 urgent: uncertainty is already causing a cost at exporting firms postponing investment decisions, so clarification has a yield even if the tariff never enters into force.

📖 Source: OECD: Economic Outlook

6.5 International comparison

In the handling of secondary sanctions, European practice of recent years shows two clearly distinguishable paths. One is rapid, documented separation: those countries which reduced the share of Russian procurement measurably within a short time argued at the negotiations not with arguments but with time series, and this form of proof proved the most effective. The cost of this path is a higher procurement price in the short term, but its yield is predictability and the fact that the country concerned drops off the agenda. The other path is waiting and seeking individual exemptions, which seems cheaper but has to be renegotiated at every change of political cycle, and ties up continuous diplomatic capacity.

The particularity of the Hungarian situation is that geographical conditions — the absence of a coast and the direction of the existing pipeline system — limit the physical possibilities of substitution, so the speed of separation cannot be measured directly against that of coastal countries. This circumstance, however, precisely increases the value of documentation: if substitution is slower, then it is especially important that the pace and the milestones be public and verifiable, because the demonstrability of the direction can make up for what speed cannot. The same holds regionally: forming a common interpretation with member states of similar conditions and similarly affected is a realistic goal because the identity of interest here is not political but geographical in origin.

Foreign policy

  • KP4 — Principle-based pragmatism doctrine
  • KP11 — Strategic balance policy
  • KP17 — Issue-based coalition building in the EU
  • KP22 — Exit strategy planning protocol
  • KP23 — Alliance credibility audit (annual)

Economy

  • G20 — Economic policy impact assessment system (Drucker audit)
  • G25 — Energy price shock preparedness plan

Environment and climate

  • K2 — Energy transition plan
  • K7 — Energy market shock resilience

Proposed new programme point: A public foreign trade exposure balance sheet — for the Economy area, for every energy procurement or trade policy decision that carries external sanctions risk.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 9 August 2026 — topic 3):

Knowledge-base references (books and strategic documents):

  • 📖 Graham Allison – Philip Zelikow: Essence of Decision
  • 📖 European Union: Shared Vision, Common Action — A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy
  • 📖 OECD: Economic Outlook

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: Foreign policy (programme points; programme point ID: KP22)
  • MIAK policy area: Economy (programme points; programme point ID: G25)
  • MIAK policy area: Environment and climate (programme points; programme point ID: K2)
  • MIAK press monitor, 9 August 2026 — topic 3, score: 90/100

Additional public data sources (where used):

  • Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) foreign trade statistics; Eurostat energy import data; the bill register of the Congress of the United States; trade policy communications of the European Commission

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