Part I — Situation overview

According to data made public on 1 August 2026, water restrictions are already in force in more than 200 Hungarian municipalities. In the places concerned it is forbidden to use drinking water for watering, car washing and pool filling, and those breaching the provision may be fined by the municipal clerk. The situation is worst in the Budapest agglomeration, where in some municipalities the restriction took effect already on Friday. The president of the national association of the water utility profession also advised economising to those in whose municipality there is as yet no formal restriction. On the same day machine intervention works began at Lake Velence: because of the exceptionally low water level, at ten sites the passages are being deepened and accumulated soft silt removed so that the connection between the remaining bodies of water is maintained — first in the area of Dinnyés, and from Monday with an amphibious machine used in nature conservation areas.

The third, qualitatively new element arrived from across the border. The Romanian government is preparing to divert one branch of the Danube with four barges at the branching of the Bala and the Old Danube, in order to secure the cooling of the Cernavodă nuclear power plant; one unit of the plant has already shut down. According to the Romanian state secretary’s statement the country’s import possibilities are severely limited, because the states of the region are likewise struggling with a drought crisis — the Hungarian shutdown at Paks was mentioned as an example. On the Hungarian side, meanwhile, a wave of disinformation had to be handled: the National Directorate for Water Management refuted point by point, in a statement, the claim circulating on the internet that Austria or Slovakia were holding back the Danube’s water. The statement recalled that the Danube is an international watercourse, over whose water resources no single state may dispose without limit, and that its use is determined by a multi-level system of international conventions, EU legislation, bilateral inter-state agreements and national rules. The incoming quantity of water is passed on essentially unchanged to the downstream sections, and the primary cause of the exceptionally low water level is the lack of precipitation in the catchment.

MIAK’s reading: water has until now appeared as a side thread of the Paks story, but today it is a policy front of its own. The present handling shows two structural weaknesses. The first is scatteredness: restriction today is born at municipal level, in the clerk’s competence, independently of one another — which is legally correct, since local water restriction is not a governmental but a municipal and utility competence, but as a result there is no point at which the country’s whole water balance is visible together. The second is the missing order: there is no order of priority promulgated in advance as to which use enjoys precedence in the event of scarcity. Where there is no order, every restriction is the result of individual consideration, and the Dunabogdány case showed what the consequence of this is. The municipality’s inhabitants appeared in the press as irresponsible, while the mayor invoked a demonstrably documented restriction in force since Friday and an island-like water supply based on the municipality’s own wells. This is not a question of household discipline but a gap in allocation regulation.

Part II — Literature foundation

Before turning to MIAK’s proposals it is worth fixing the conceptual frame. Elinor Ostrom (American political scientist and economist, awarded the Nobel memorial prize in economics in 2009 for her research on the self-governance of common resources) derived from her comparative analysis of long-lived, self-governing communal resource systems — in the terminology of the literature common-pool resources — eight design principles, among them clear boundaries, appropriation rules fitted to local conditions, monitoring, graduated sanctions and a conflict resolution procedure. A significant part of her research examined precisely the allocation regimes of irrigation systems and groundwater bodies. The work The Stern Review by Nicholas Stern (British economist, author of the climate economics report prepared for the British Treasury) provides the numerical frame for this: it fixes the internationally used thresholds of water scarcity, and sets out the sectoral distribution of water use — irrigated agriculture accounts for about 70 per cent of global freshwater abstraction, industry (including thermal power plant cooling) for 22 per cent, and household and service use for 8 per cent. The two frames together define today’s Hungarian task: allocation is not primarily a quantitative but an institutional question. 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: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action; Nicholas Stern: The Economics of Climate Change — The Stern Review

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures which can be launched even during the present drought.

3.1 A national water balance dashboard — with daily updating (within 30 days)

Today there is no public interface on which it can be seen at once where the country’s water budget stands. The data exist — water levels, groundwater levels, karst water levels, reservoir fill, municipal water abstraction — but at several organisations, in differing formats and with differing update frequencies. MIAK proposes that within 30 days a unified, daily updated water balance dashboard, downloadable also in machine-readable form, should be launched, showing by municipality the daily water abstraction and the restriction level in force, by catchment the state of surface and groundwater resources, and the water levels of the large lakes. The dashboard does not require a new measurement network: it requires the linking and publication of existing data. It has two benefits. One is professional: scarcity becomes visible locally, so the restriction decision can rest on data rather than impression. The other concerns public trust: the fake news about the holding back of the Danube could spread precisely because the reader had nowhere to go to check it. The proposal builds on the K1 measurable climate targets and the K3 pollution monitoring programme points, and in its publication logic follows the template of A1 and D9.

3.2 An order of priority for water use, promulgated in advance, with levels (within 60 days)

Restriction is today born in the clerk’s competence, separately in each municipality, and the content of the levels is not uniform either. According to MIAK, within 60 days a nationally uniform order of priority, promulgated in advance, is needed, fixing for each scarcity level which use may be restricted and in what order: first recreational and horticultural use, then industrial non-cooling abstraction, then irrigation, and finally — only as a last resort and with a quantitative guarantee — household supply. Healthcare institutions, residential social care and the food cold chain should be exempt from restriction at every level of the system. The order should be graduated in sanction in Ostrom’s sense: a warning on the first occasion, a fine on repetition, restricted service in the case of persistent breach (see 6.4.1). Local room for manoeuvre remains — the promulgation of the level continues to be a local decision, since water utility systems differ technically — but the content of the levels and the circle of exemptions is the same nationally. The proposal is linked to the G28 common resource management framework and to the MG5 programme point.

3.3 A regional water-sharing initiative for drought periods (first proposal within 90 days)

The Romanian Danube diversion is worth framing not as a Hungarian–Romanian conflict but as a regulatory gap. The water management authority’s statement itself recorded that the use of the Danube is regulated by a multi-level international system — but that system was made for navigation, for water quality and for normal operation, not for the situation in which several riparian states simultaneously abstract water for power plant cooling under critical scarcity. MIAK proposes that within 90 days Hungary should make a written proposal, within the framework of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR), for a drought-period water-sharing protocol. The proposal should contain three elements: joint, real-time flow rate and abstraction data provision among the riparian states; a prior notification obligation for significant abstractions for cooling purposes; and a rapid consultation procedure that can be convened within a short deadline counted from the notification. This is not a question of sovereignty and not a veto right: it is data sharing and procedure. The proposal builds on the KP15 institutionalisation of preventive diplomacy and the KP10 regional resilience building programme points.

The three proposals are bound together by a single principle: water shortage cannot be handled with appeals. As long as it is not visible how much there is, and it is not written down how much is due to whom, every restriction is disputable and every sacrifice remains incidental. The data and the order do not solve the scarcity — only precipitation and long-term water retention can do that — but they ensure that the scarcity is distributed fairly and verifiably.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Economy A predictable order of restriction makes it possible for activities built on irrigation and industrial water use to plan ahead; the deterioration of navigability thus at least becomes a known risk factor Restricting irrigation causes direct crop loss; widening the circle of exemptions under political pressure can hollow out the system
Society Uniform levels end the situation in which neighbouring municipalities live under different rules; the public data protect the population from framing that blames them Publication broken down by municipality can also be used to set communities against one another, if it is not accompanied by a presentation of local conditions
Public administration The pairing of the central yardstick and local promulgation clarifies responsibility: the utility measures, the municipality orders, the state provides the frame Without clarification of competences the central order may look like apparent centralisation, while implementation continues to be local

The main trade-off is tense between uniformity and local adaptation. Hungarian water utility systems differ greatly in technical terms: the Dunabogdány case showed precisely that an island-like system with its own wells behaves radically differently from the agglomeration average, and the summer increase in population there may in itself justify restriction. An excessively uniform national order would obscure this difference. MIAK’s proposal therefore centralises not the decision but the content of the levels and the circle of exemptions — in accordance with Ostrom’s second design principle, which requires appropriation rules to be fitted to local conditions.

The second trade-off concerns the international initiative. Raising a drought-period water-sharing proposal may create tension in the short term: the neighbouring states may read it as a narrowing of their own room for manoeuvre, especially at a moment when each of them faces its own energy security constraint. The proposal therefore deliberately starts with the weakest commitment — data provision and notification, not a quantitative quota. Experience shows that water-sharing regimes are built up in this way: first transparency, then procedure, and only much later an allocation rule.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (proposed performance indicators)

According to MIAK the following performance indicators (KPIs, in English Key Performance Indicator) are worth tracking:

  • The coverage of the water balance dashboard: for how many municipalities the daily abstraction data and restriction level are available on a single interface — the proposed target being that after 30 days the overwhelming majority of municipalities under restriction should figure on it.
  • The uniformity of restriction levels: how many municipalities apply the nationally promulgated level definitions in their own decrees — proposed measurement after 90 days.
  • The number and population of municipalities under restriction: tracked in a weekly time series so that it is visible whether the situation is improving or worsening — today’s starting point is more than 200 municipalities.
  • The state of the international initiative: whether the drought-period protocol proposal has been submitted, and how many riparian states have responded to it substantively — proposed first stocktaking after 180 days.

5.2 Summary

The key message: MIAK asks the government not to handle water shortage as a series of successive local measures. Three steps are needed — within 30 days the daily updated national water balance dashboard should be launched; within 60 days the nationally uniform order of priority for water use should appear, with a circle of exemptions and graduated sanctions; and within 90 days Hungary should make a written proposal to the Danube riparian states for a drought-period water-sharing protocol. None of them is expensive, and none of them requires waiting for the end of the drought.

Two MIAK foundational values are in play in this matter. Transparency, because the absence of public data on water resources is not a neutral state: conspiracy theories move into its place, and the utility has to race after them with refuting statements after the fact — a struggle lost from the outset if the data are not available at the moment the question arises. And universal representation, because the burden of water restriction is today not evenly distributed: the inhabitant of a small municipality with its own wells, the owner of a detached house in the agglomeration and the irrigating farmer are in radically different situations, but all three live from the same stock. Where there is no promulgated order, the burden falls where resistance is least — not where the damage is least. MIAK asks the same yardstick of every government: the allocation of scarcity is a political decision, and must therefore be made publicly and in advance, not along the way.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The economic band gave the most precise quantitative picture, and it was this band that first connected the water and the energy question. Portfolio carried at once the news about the restriction affecting 200 municipalities, about the start of the intervention at Lake Velence and about the Romanian Danube diversion, and in a stand-alone analysis showed that the inland freight transport of the Danube countries is falling conspicuously behind the Rhine-centred West European logistics. This band therefore framed water shortage as a systemic economic effect, not as weather news.

The liberal-left band turned towards disinformation and local community reactions. Both Telex and 444.hu reported that the water management directorate had to refute point by point, in a statement, the claims about the holding back of the Danube, and Telex presented the Dunabogdány case in a stand-alone article, including the mayor’s firm rejection of the framing that portrayed the locals as irresponsible — a noteworthy piece of self-reflection, because the headline objected to was that of the same paper’s article of the previous day. 444.hu also drew attention to the water quality risk, with the Óbuda contamination seeping into the drying Danube.

The conservative band weighed the effectiveness of government measures, in two directions. Magyar Nemzet wrote on the one hand that there is a municipality where water consumption rose further despite the appeals, and on the other reported the commissioning of the new well at Zalaszentgrót as a turning point. Mandiner placed the Romanian Danube diversion in a comparative frame. One aspect was missing from the whole spectrum: not a single piece asked whether a nationally uniform definition of water restriction levels exists at all — even though the news value of the 200 municipalities turns on whether it means the same thing everywhere.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
Number of municipalities under water restriction more than 200 RTL Híradó, after Portfolio, 1 August 2026
The content of the restriction forbidden to water, wash cars or fill pools with drinking water Portfolio, 1 August 2026
Entitled to impose the fine the municipal clerk Portfolio, 1 August 2026
Intervention sites at Lake Velence 10 Portfolio, 1 August 2026
The site of the first intervention the area of Dinnyés, the passage between the Névtelen clearing and the Kis Mihály clearing Portfolio, 1 August 2026
The instrument of the Romanian Danube diversion 4 barges at the branching of the Bala and the Old Danube Portfolio, 31 July 2026
Alert status of the Romanian counties concerned Constanța and Călărași Portfolio, 31 July 2026
Number of Austrian barrages on the Danube 12 statement of the National Directorate for Water Management, Telex, 1 August 2026
Barrages on the Hungarian Danube section there is none that would allow high-water accumulation statement of the water management directorate, Telex, 1 August 2026
EU inland freight transport in 2025 approx. 118 bn tonne-kilometres, approx. −3% in a year Eurostat, after Portfolio, 1 August 2026
Performance of Germany and the Netherlands 42.7 and approx. 42.0–42.2 bn tonne-kilometres respectively Eurostat, after Portfolio, 1 August 2026
Hungary’s inland freight transport 1541 → 1384 million tonne-kilometres (−10.2%) Eurostat, after Portfolio, 1 August 2026
Austria’s inland freight transport 1301 → 1035 million tonne-kilometres (−20.4%) Eurostat, after Portfolio, 1 August 2026
Romania’s inland freight transport 12.57 → 10.94 bn tonne-kilometres (−13.0%) Eurostat, after Portfolio, 1 August 2026
Hungarian performance compared with the 2019 peak more than a third lower Portfolio, 1 August 2026
Water secured by the mobile abstraction system at Dunabogdány approx. 50 m³ on the day of Friday’s commissioning statement of the Budapest Waterworks, Telex, 1 August 2026
Distribution of global freshwater abstraction irrigated agriculture approx. 70%, industry 22%, household and services 8% Stern Review
The international threshold of water scarcity (severe water stress) resources below 1000 m³/person/year Stern Review

Among the data the inland freight transport row deserves highlighting, because it shows that water shortage is not only a supply question but also a structural economic one. Hungarian performance has fallen by more than a third compared with the 2019 peak, and most of the remaining traffic is transit — that is, the Hungarian Danube section is today more a corridor than an economic space built on domestic ports and industry. The low water level does not start this process but accelerates it: what does not go by ship goes by road, at higher cost and with greater emissions.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Environment and climate (programme points) — measurable, publicly trackable water resource targets and real-time monitoring; the water resource module of climate economics modelling (programme point ID: K1, K3, K9);
  • Agriculture (programme points) — the common resource management framework for catchment regions, and drought-tolerant, data-based irrigation (programme point ID: MG5, MG1, MG2);
  • Economy (programme points) — the legal and institutional framework of the common resource along Ostrom’s principles (programme point ID: G28);
  • Foreign policy (programme points) — settling Danube water sharing with preventive diplomacy instruments (programme point ID: KP15, KP10);
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — public data disclosure as an instrument of public trust (programme point ID: A1).

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Elinor Ostrom: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

Ostrom compared the centuries-long operation of Swiss alpine pastures, Japanese communal forests, Spanish irrigation associations and Philippine irrigation communities, and sought an answer to the question of what distinguishes enduringly functioning communal resource systems from those that break down. Her answer is eight design principles, all of which enduring systems fulfil: clearly defined boundaries; the fitting of appropriation and provision rules to local conditions; collective-choice arrangements in which those affected participate; monitoring; graduated sanctions; a conflict resolution mechanism; minimal recognition of the right to organise; and — in larger systems — nested, multi-level organisation. Ostrom emphasises that the concrete rules necessarily differ, because the physical system, cultural embeddedness and local economic conditions also differ — the principles do not give a template but conditions.

Translated to the Hungarian water situation, this means that three principles are missing from the present system. Clear boundaries, because there is no uniform definition of what each restriction level means. Monitoring, because the data exist but do not add up to a common picture, and are not public either. And graduated sanctions, because the clerk’s fine in its present form is single-step. The fourth gap is the largest in scale: nested, multi-level organisation — in the case of the Danube as a common resource there is no drought-period allocation layer built above the national level. In Ostrom’s frame this is not a question of willingness to cooperate but an institutional gap.

📖 Source: Elinor Ostrom: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

6.4.2 Nicholas Stern: The Economics of Climate Change — The Stern Review

The water management chapter of the Stern Review describes water shortage with internationally comparable thresholds: a country experiences water shortage (severe water stress) if the available resource falls below 1,000 cubic metres per head per year, and we speak of absolute water scarcity below 500 cubic metres. The report also fixes basic personal need — excluding food production, about 50 litres per head per day, covering drinking, washing, sanitation and food preparation. The thresholds are substantially higher than basic need because the greater part of water is not used for direct human consumption: according to the report, globally irrigated agriculture accounts for about 70 per cent of current freshwater abstraction, industry for 22 per cent — including thermal power plant cooling, a significant part of which returns to the system, but at a higher temperature — and household, municipal and service use for a mere 8 per cent.

This breakdown directly explains today’s Hungarian situation, and also corrects a widespread error. Restricting household watering and pool filling is important and has signalling value, but from the point of view of the total water balance it touches the smallest slice; the real stake is irrigation and cooling water. That is precisely why the order of priority is not a symbolic document: if a scarcity level relates exclusively to the eight per cent slice, then the system loads visibility onto the population while the quantity is decided elsewhere. In addition, the Stern Review also names the temperature-raising effect of returning cooling water — this is exactly the mechanism that appears as a limit value in the Paks cooling water constraint too.

📖 Source: Nicholas Stern: The Economics of Climate Change — The Stern Review (UK Treasury, 2007)

6.5 International comparison

The most direct comparison again arises with Romania: there the diversion of the Danube branch is planned with four barges, with preparation by government decision and with the declaration of county alert status, that is, the intervention takes place under a formalised procedure. On the Hungarian side the works at Lake Velence were launched with the involvement of expert opinions, but without a publicly promulgated procedure. The lesson is not that the Romanian solution is better — the diversion is precisely what raises the greatest question with its downstream effects — but that intervention decisions should on both sides be born under a documented order verifiable after the fact.

The wider European picture shows that the phenomenon is not a Hungarian peculiarity: the Rhine’s water level at Cologne has sunk to a record low, and according to Eurostat data the inland freight transport of the Danube EU countries shows a double-digit decline, while German and Dutch performance has essentially held up. This difference is not only hydrological: the port, industrial and logistical embeddedness of the Rhine system is stronger by orders of magnitude, so it also bears water level fluctuation better. The Hungarian lesson from this is that improving navigability is not enough in itself — the lack of economic embeddedness of the Danube section is at least as large a stake as the water level.

Environment and climate

  • K1 — Measurable climate targets
  • K3 — Pollution monitoring
  • K9 — Domestic integrated climate economics model

Agriculture

  • MG5 — Common resource management framework
  • MG1 — Precision agriculture programme
  • MG2 — Agricultural data platform

Economy

  • G28 — Framework for common resource management

Foreign policy

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

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A1 — Public money dashboard

Proposed new programme point: A national water balance dashboard and uniform restriction levels — for the Environment and climate area: daily updated public water data broken down by municipality, and scarcity levels of nationally identical content with a circle of exemptions.

6.7 List of sources

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

Knowledge-base references (books):

  • 📖 Elinor Ostrom: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
  • 📖 Nicholas Stern: The Economics of Climate Change — The Stern Review

Note: the local file path of the book 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, K9)
  • MIAK policy area: Agriculture (programme points; programme point ID: MG5, MG1)
  • MIAK policy area: Foreign policy (programme points; programme point ID: KP15, KP10)
  • MIAK press monitor, 2 August 2026 — topic 2, score: 88/100

Additional public data sources:

  • National Directorate for Water Management — water level, flow rate and groundwater time series
  • Eurostat — inland freight transport performance time series
  • Copernicus European Drought Observatory — drought index
  • International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) — reports

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