The State of Hungary: A Republic at Forty Degrees
July’s first visible repairs collided with a heat emergency that exposed Hungary’s dependence on a warming river and Russian energy.
I did not expect four air-conditioning units in Vác to become one of my favourite political developments of July. Yet here we are.
They were installed over two days at the Jávorszky Ödön Hospital, cooling the emergency waiting areas and the triage room, where nurses assess patients before treatment. A second system was planned for the respiratory clinic, covering two examination rooms and the laboratory used for lung-function testing. The hospital described the purpose plainly: improving patient safety as Hungary adapts to changing weather conditions.
I realise how modest this sounds, but in Hungary this is progress all the same. The government spent July recovering access to billions of euros, presenting the largest railway programme announced in the country’s recent history and recalling dozens of diplomats who had represented Viktor Orbán’s foreign policy abroad. Still, I am going to begin with four cooling units.
Last month, I followed Hungary’s democratic transition through constitutional amendments, appointment rules and the recovery of powers that Orbán’s governments had placed beyond the reach of ordinary elections. This month, I wanted to know whether anything had improved outside Parliament.
The answer is yes, although the progress remains incomplete and is occasionally surrounded by government language so confident that one might assume the new metro extension had already carried its first passenger. The clearest evidence appeared first in hospitals. Beyond them, the government reopened a route to European financing, revived transport projects that had spent years suspended between promise and neglect, and began changing the people through whom Hungary speaks to Washington, Moscow and Kyiv.
Then the Danube fell towards a historic low.
At the Paks Nuclear Power Plant, reactors began shutting down unit by unit. The same heat that had made hospital cooling urgent was now slowing trains, damaging crops and narrowing the country’s electricity supply. Hungary’s first visible repairs found themselves racing a climate emergency that had no interest in its political timetable.
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Four air conditioners
The national hospital cooling programme began on 11 June with HUF 3.668 billion, roughly $11.6 million at July exchange rates, set aside for urgent repairs and reconstruction.
The first government survey identified thirty-two projects. The June heatwave exposed failures at another twenty-five institutions, bringing the total to fifty-seven. By 18 July, Health Minister Zsolt Hegedűs, by now the government’s improbable dancing legend, reported that eleven projects had been completed. New cooling equipment was operating at ten more locations, where formal handovers were continuing, while fourteen projects were under construction and twenty-two remained in design.
Those figures come from the minister’s progress report, so I will return to them as the summer reaches its closing stages. For now, they establish a useful distinction: eleven projects were complete, ten institutions had begun using new equipment, and work elsewhere ranged from active construction to technical drawings. A plan sitting on an engineer’s desk offers no relief during a heatwave. In Vác, patients can already feel the result.
I know something of the atmosphere inside Hungarian hospitals. I was a clumsy child and spent more time in them than I would have preferred, usually after some fresh collision with a pavement, a bicycle or my own poor judgment. The buildings often frightened me almost as much as the injuries. Their tired corridors and worn rooms carried the sense that the institution itself was struggling alongside the people inside it.
That was around twenty years ago. Too little has changed since.
Hungarians have wanted better healthcare for as long as I can remember, and the scale of the work ahead remains formidable. Staffing shortages, waiting lists, exhausted buildings and deep regional inequalities will require years of sustained attention. That is precisely why a small completed repair deserves recognition. It shows that improvement has begun somewhere more tangible than a government presentation.
Hungary has lived with seasonal hospital cooling failures for years. Each summer brought reports of overheated wards, failed ventilation, postponed procedures and nurses attempting to create tolerable conditions with portable fans. Because every breakdown appeared under the name of a different institution, the country could discuss them as isolated incidents instead of recognising a health service that had normalised unsafe summer conditions.
The new programme suggests a more responsive approach. Officials surveyed the hospitals, began urgent work and expanded the programme after the first heatwave revealed that the initial assessment had missed too much. In sum, the first plan proved inadequate and the government revised it, which should be ordinary public administration and in Hungary feels faintly luxurious.
Cooling systems will not replace missing nurses, shorten waiting lists or restore neglected rural services. They determine whether operations can proceed safely, whether intensive-care staff can work in tolerable conditions and whether patients already weakened by illness must also endure extreme indoor heat. Hegedűs described adequate cooling in operating theatres and intensive-care units as essential to safe treatment.
This is where political change becomes real. A patient arrives frightened and unwell, the triage area remains usable, and the staff can concentrate on the person in front of them. No minister needs to unveil a plaque. I find that more persuasive than another declaration delivered beneath the chandeliers of Parliament.
Europe opens the door
On 10 July, the Council of the European Union approved Hungary’s revised recovery and resilience plan. The agreement should allow €10 billion to be disbursed, comprising approximately €6.5 billion in grants and €3.5 billion in loans, with payments tied to verified reforms and investment targets.
The decision did not place €10 billion at the government’s immediate disposal. It reopened access to funding Hungary had spent years losing.
That is a major achievement after Orbán’s government repeatedly described European scrutiny as an assault on national dignity. Frozen funds became part of a permanent political performance in which Brussels was accused of withholding Hungary’s property, while the legal and administrative conditions attached to the money remained unresolved. Péter Magyar’s government chose cooperation and accepted stronger safeguards around public finance, and the Council’s decision is the first large financial result of that choice.
The success arrived with a demanding timetable. The European Recovery and Resilience Facility closes at the end of August 2026, leaving Hungary to complete agreed reforms and investments under a schedule compressed by years of delay. Some of the funding can reimburse eligible projects already completed, while the remaining milestones still require rapid verification and delivery.
The timetable places particular pressure on procurement. The government has weeks to complete work that should have been organised over several years, and urgency cannot become an excuse for obscure contracts, weak competition or projects selected mainly because they can be finished before the European deadline.
I will also be watching how often the same funding reappears in government announcements. European money tends to acquire several political lives as it moves from an agreement in Brussels to a programme in Budapest, then through a public institution and eventually towards a contractor. Each stage deserves its own description. Approval means that funding has become available under agreed conditions; it does not mean that a hospital has been renovated or a railway has been built.
Three days after the Council’s decision, the European Commission approved a €2 billion capital injection into the Hungarian Development Bank. A public development bank can finance projects whose benefits arrive too slowly for commercial lenders and, therefore, support regional businesses, housing and infrastructure that strengthen communities over decades.
Hungarians have good reason to approach this arrangement with caution. We are all scarred by what happened under Fidesz, when public funds, state institutions and private political networks became so closely intertwined that following the money often required an investigative newsroom and considerable stamina. I remain hopeful that Tisza and Magyar intend to break with that culture, although the public will need evidence in the form of transparent lending criteria, published beneficiaries and contracts that can withstand independent scrutiny.
The government should make each significant loan and investment traceable. People should be able to follow European funding from approval to contract and from contract to the hospital, railway station or electrical substation it was meant to improve. That level of disclosure would allow the new government to demonstrate that European money has returned alongside a different understanding of public responsibility.
Changing Hungary’s voice abroad
The same month, the government began changing the people through whom Hungary speaks to the world.
On 26 June, Foreign Minister Anita Orbán recalled thirty-seven heads of diplomatic missions. Some had reached the end of their mandates, while others were removed under a stated test of representing the new government’s priorities credibly and effectively. Orbán also created a personnel and training division with a larger ambition for the ministry.
“A real profession again.”
The scale was quite extraordinary. The recalls covered almost a quarter of Hungary’s foreign representations and reached Washington, Moscow and Kyiv, the three capitals around which much of Viktor Orbán’s final foreign-policy identity had formed.
Szabolcs Takács had served as ambassador to Washington since 2020 after holding senior positions in Budapest. His embassy operated during a period when Fidesz invested heavily in the American nationalist right and treated access to Donald Trump’s movement as one of Hungary’s principal diplomatic assets.
Look where that got us.
Hungary’s relationship with Washington became so ideologically narrow that Budapest’s influence rose and fell with the fortunes of one American political movement. The next ambassador will need to rebuild contacts across the federal government, Congress, business, defence and the Hungarian-American community. Relations between two countries cannot be sustained through photographs with whichever political faction happens to feel most sympathetic towards the Hungarian prime minister.
Moscow carries a heavier burden.
Norbert Konkoly had led Hungary’s embassy there since 2018, covering Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Hungary’s growing isolation among its European allies and the continuation of the Paks II project with Rosatom. His recall suggests that the government is reconsidering the political instructions attached to the post, rather than simply changing the person who holds it.
The Moscow embassy is now led temporarily by chargé d’affaires Gábor Gergics. Hungary currently has no permanent ambassador in the capital that shaped so much of Orbán’s energy policy and international positioning, while the new government decides what kind of relationship it wants with the Kremlin.
Kyiv represents another kind of repair.
Legitimate concerns about the rights of Hungarians in Transcarpathia became entangled with obstruction, election rhetoric and Budapest’s hostility towards the Ukrainian government. Minority rights were repeatedly discussed within a relationship already poisoned by Hungary’s accommodation of Moscow.
“A new, mutually beneficial chapter.”
The phrase establishes a different basis for negotiations. Disputes over education, language rights and Ukraine’s European future can be addressed within a functioning bilateral relationship, rather than being allowed to define every contact between Budapest and Kyiv.
The thirty-seven vacancies now require credible appointments. Washington needs an ambassador capable of working beyond one American political camp. Moscow requires somebody who understands energy dependence, security and the limits of accommodation with an aggressive state. Kyiv needs a diplomat able to defend the Hungarian minority without turning that responsibility into an instrument of permanent conflict.
Language skills, regional knowledge, security experience and independence from party patronage should guide these appointments. The choices made for these three capitals will show whether the promised professional renewal has substance.
A railway plan I want to believe
The government presented it as a ten-year programme worth HUF 3.55 trillion, approximately $11.2 billion at July exchange rates. Its financing combines HUF 1.8 trillion from the current European budget cycle with commitments from the next cycle, European Investment Bank lending and concession-based investment.
The official announcement gave the programme a grand destination:
“The end of the era of railway destruction.”
Hungarian passengers may wish to reserve judgment until the first replacement bus has been returned safely to its depot.
The plan is nevertheless quite substantial. It proposes thirty-five high-capacity InterCity trains and forty-two low-floor, air-conditioned HÉV suburban trains, alongside station reconstruction, track renewal, stronger regional services and work to remove speed restrictions. The government says it wants to avoid “isolated prestige projects” and pursue a national programme capable of continuing across several parliamentary terms.
Anyone who has travelled regularly by rail in Hungary knows how quickly optimism can evaporate inside an overheated carriage standing somewhere outside Szolnok. Some of the existing vehicles appear old enough to remember the Warsaw Pact personally. Temporary speed restrictions have acquired a permanence that makes the word temporary feel generous, so the programme has inherited a formidable amount of work.
The M3 metro extension is the most recognisable promise within it.
The line would continue north from Újpest-központ through two new stations to Rákospalota-Újpest railway station, creating a direct interchange with routes towards Veresegyház, Vác and Szob. Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony greeted the announcement as:
“A historic day for Hungarian public transport.”
The current design ends at Rákospalota-Újpest rather than continuing to Káposztásmegyer, the destination discussed for decades. Transport specialists gave a practical explanation: the shorter version already has permit designs and may still fit within the current European financing period. Continuing to Káposztásmegyer would probably push completion into 2032 or 2033. Even the two-station version requires a contractor to be selected within approximately six months, together with land purchases, utility diversions and detailed construction preparations.
The shorter route would create a useful interchange and preserve the possibility of further expansion, while leaving the historic promise to Káposztásmegyer unfinished. The government should say this plainly rather than presenting the first stage as the fulfilment of the entire plan.
For the first time in years, the extension has an agreed route, an identified funding window and a deadline. Construction has yet to begin, so passengers should probably avoid queuing, but it is promising.
The heat found every weak point
I had planned to end this edition with the trains. It would have been an unusually optimistic monthly report about cooler hospitals, recovered European financing, diplomatic repair and a government directing its attention towards infrastructure people can use.
Then the Danube continued falling.
June had already broken the boundaries of an ordinary Hungarian summer. According to HungaroMet’s monthly analysis, the national average temperature reached 22.5 degrees Celsius, making it the country’s second-hottest June since measurements began in 1901. Rainfall reached only 39.8 millimetres, around 45 per cent below the modern average, while Szécsény recorded a new national high of 42 degrees. On 29 June, the average temperature across Hungary reached 30.2 degrees, the highest national daily mean recorded since the beginning of the twentieth century.
HungaroMet found the right phrase for the month:
“The Carpathian Basin became a Carpathian furnace.”
By late July, the description was visible in reduced production at Paks, restrictions across the railway network, damaged crops and the emergency work taking place inside hospitals.
Hungary’s only nuclear power station relies on the Danube for cooling and normally provides up to forty per cent of the country’s electricity. During July, unusually warm river water forced temporary reductions in output so that the cooling water discharged by the plant remained within environmental limits.
The Hungarian Atomic Energy Authority stressed that nuclear safety had not been compromised. Technical reserves could continue cooling the reactors even if river flow fell as much as ninety per cent below its seasonal level. The reactors remained safe, while normal electricity production became increasingly difficult within the plant’s operating and environmental limits.
As July approached its end, the temperature of the water was joined by a second problem. The river itself was becoming too shallow.
On Sunday, 2 August, Magyar warned that Hungary faced its “five most critical days”. Full generation at Paks was expected to stop from Monday as temperatures approached forty degrees, removing close to two gigawatts of domestic capacity during the most demanding part of the summer.
“Our electricity system, our public utilities and all of us will come under enormous strain.”
The shutdown would arrive at the most difficult point in Hungary’s daily energy cycle. Solar power could carry much of the country’s consumption under the bright afternoon sun, although its output would fall rapidly towards evening while homes, hospitals and businesses remained hot. Gas-fired stations and imported electricity would then have to replace much of the missing nuclear generation, with neighbouring countries drawing on many of the same regional supplies during the same heatwave.
In response, the government prepared a graduated reduction in demand. Large industrial users could face compulsory cuts if voluntary restraint failed, while freight services might be suspended during periods of peak consumption and passenger trains slowed to conserve electricity. Decorative lighting would be extinguished, and companies and households were asked to reduce consumption during the evening.
The crisis moved through the country from one vulnerable system to another. Hospitals required more electricity to keep wards and operating theatres cool just as Paks was losing output. Railway services faced heat-related restrictions, and depleted soil moisture spread the damage across the Great Plain, where European crop monitors recorded severe losses among winter and summer crops.
The World Health Organization has warned that extreme heat should now be treated as a recurring public-health crisis. Interruptions to electricity, transport and water services place additional pressure on hospitals precisely when older people, those with chronic illnesses and outdoor workers face the greatest danger.
The four air-conditioning units in Vác therefore belong to a far larger story. They form part of a healthcare service preparing for recurrent extreme heat while depending upon an electricity system weakened by the same temperatures.
Hungary may survive the immediate emergency through imports, industrial reductions and the eventual restart of Paks. The lasting response will have to be reflected in budgets and construction schedules long after the river begins to rise again. Before next summer, the government should be able to identify which storage projects have been commissioned, which hospitals have completed cooling work, where water-retention schemes have begun and how the grid will carry evening demand when solar production falls.
The country that consumes too much
Hungary’s vulnerability has been shaped by its geography and by economic policies that placed growing demands on electricity and water.
The European Commission’s 2026 country report found that the Hungarian economy uses around seventy per cent more energy than the EU average to produce the same amount of economic value. It also warned that government support for resource-intensive industries, including battery manufacturing, was increasing pressure on systems already exposed to drought and water scarcity.
Successive governments encouraged factories requiring vast quantities of electricity and water while investment in storage, grid flexibility and water retention remained inadequate. In several regions, industrial expansion therefore arrived before the public infrastructure required to sustain it securely.
In a July parliamentary speech, Magyar established his own standard for investment:
“Hungarian water, air, soil and nature are not made to pay the price of profit.”
The energy emergency now gives his government an opportunity to apply those words. Large industrial projects should disclose their expected electricity and water consumption before approval, together with the public cost of the additional infrastructure they require. Local communities should receive environmental assessments early enough to influence decisions rather than merely being informed after contracts have been signed.
The same Commission report estimates that Hungary will need to invest the equivalent of approximately 0.52 per cent of GDP every year until 2050 to address its climate exposure. It has also identified weak coordination among the authorities responsible for energy, agriculture, industry and water.
That estimate should become a permanent line in Hungary’s annual budgets. By the summer of 2027, progress should be visible through completed hospital cooling projects, contracted electricity storage, strengthened water-retention programmes and published adaptation plans for the regions facing the most severe drought.
The Russian knot
The difficulties at Paks revealed the physical concentration of Hungary’s electricity system, while the emergency response drew attention to how much of the country’s wider energy supply still depends upon Russia.
In 2025, more than ninety per cent of Hungary’s imported oil and seventy-four per cent of its imported gas came from Russia. The Russian share of oil imports had increased from the previous year, even as most European countries continued reducing their purchases following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Across the European Union, Russia’s share of gas imports fell from approximately forty-five per cent before the invasion to twelve per cent in 2025. Its share of imported oil declined from twenty-seven per cent to around two per cent, leaving Hungary among the final buyers.
Budapest frequently answered criticism of this dependence by pointing to the construction of additional pipelines and interconnectors. Those routes gave Hungary more options for moving gas across its borders, although the International Energy Agency described their central limitation plainly:
“Diversification of supply routes, not of natural gas supply sources.”
Much of the gas continued to originate in Russia regardless of the country through which it arrived.
Hungary’s landlocked position makes rapid replacement costly and technically difficult, which gives the additional connections genuine value. The previous government nevertheless turned this constraint into a political doctrine. Russian oil and gas were repeatedly presented as uniquely cheap and practically irreplaceable, allowing dependence upon Moscow to acquire the language of national sovereignty.
Diversification had begun before the election. Three long-term agreements with American and European suppliers are expected eventually to cover around twelve per cent of Hungary’s annual gas consumption. Alternative nuclear-fuel arrangements were also signed with Framatome, with deliveries planned from 2027, and Westinghouse, whose deliveries are expected from 2028 subject to licensing. Russian fuel will remain central to the existing reactors until those alternatives arrive and receive regulatory approval.
Budapest also faces a European deadline. A binding EU regulation took effect on 3 February 2026, beginning the permanent phase-out of Russian gas. Russian liquefied natural gas is due to leave the EU market by the end of 2026, while pipeline imports must end no later than 30 November 2027.
The pressure extends into nuclear power.
The proposed Paks II expansion remains tied to Rosatom through Russian technology, financing and contractors. The first concrete for Unit 5 was poured on 5 February 2026, giving the project the formal international status of a nuclear power plant under construction.
Magyar’s government has therefore inherited an active building site rather than a proposal awaiting approval. Excavation has taken place, foundations have begun and substantial legal and financial commitments already exist.
On 24 July, Economy and Energy Minister István Kapitány dismissed Gergely Jákli as chief executive of Paks II and appointed Attila Ságodi. Kapitány had already promised a review of the project’s classified contracts, which the new government said it had not previously been able to examine.
Every available route carries serious costs. Continuing with the existing project could provide the low-carbon electricity Hungary will need as the current reactors age, while preserving a strategic Russian role in the country’s energy supply for decades. Cancellation could generate large compensation claims and leave Hungary without replacement capacity. Renegotiation will depend on the contents of the classified contracts and the extent to which other companies can replace Russian finance, technology and expertise.
The summer shutdown strengthens the case for a broader review of Hungary’s nuclear future. Paks remains central to the country’s low-carbon electricity supply, and allowing that capacity to disappear without reliable replacement would increase dependence on gas and imported power. The summer has also demonstrated the danger of concentrating so much generation at one site beside a river whose behaviour is becoming less predictable, while the project intended to replace the ageing reactors remains bound to Russian finance, contractors and technology.
The review of Paks II must move beyond changing its chief executive. The government should publish what it can from the classified agreements and explain the financial consequences of continuing, renegotiating or leaving the project. Hungarians deserve to know how much has already been spent, which obligations can still be altered and how far alternative companies could replace Rosatom without producing years of delay.
Every available route will be expensive. That is the inheritance.
The first attempt at an answer
The government had begun responding before the Danube reached its lowest point. In June, it opened EU-financed programmes worth HUF 500 billion, approximately $1.6 billion, for electricity-network upgrades and smart meters. Around €1.5 billion from the wider reopening of European funding is expected to support the grid and help connect more than 4,800 megawatts of additional clean generating capacity by 2030.
The Energy Ministry reduced the problem to four words:
“We need to move quickly.”
By August, those words described an emergency rather than a development programme.
Hungary has built solar capacity at remarkable speed, and during the brightest hours of the crisis it carried much of the country’s consumption. The weakness arrives later in the day, when production falls with the sun while buildings remain hot and demand stays high. Storage, grid upgrades and more flexible generation will determine how much of that daytime electricity can still be useful after sunset.
The government does not yet have every answer, and no credible energy policy could be produced in the middle of a five-day emergency. The immediate programme does, however, identify where the work has to begin. Electricity needs to move more easily between regions, renewable production needs stronger storage behind it, and Hungary needs more options when one large source of generation suddenly disappears.
Water policy now belongs inside the same conversation. The low Danube affected nuclear output, while drought damaged crops and increased pressure on local supplies. The government will have to decide which investments deserve priority, where water can be retained more effectively and how industrial development should proceed in regions already facing scarcity. Those choices require hydrologists, energy planners, farmers, local authorities and engineers working from the same projections rather than separate ministerial assumptions.
The first proof will come through construction. By next summer, the public should be able to see which storage projects have contracts, which sections of the grid are being strengthened and which hospital cooling programmes have moved from plans into operating equipment. The emergency has already produced enough speeches.
August will be less patient
The first week of August will examine the government through the electricity system itself.
Paks is expected to remain offline until river conditions permit normal production. Large industrial consumers have been asked to reduce demand voluntarily, with compulsory restrictions available if those reductions prove insufficient. Imports and gas-fired stations will carry more of the evening load as solar output fades.
Ágnes Forsthoffer, carrying out the president’s duties, has invited the prime minister and parliamentary faction leaders to discuss the emergency. Fidesz and the Christian Democrats agreed to attend after weeks of boycotts, walkouts and declarations of resistance.
Their presence will be useful, although their recent conduct offers little basis for romanticism. Fidesz has shown that it can turn a procedural dispute into an existential drama before lunch. The government should publish the technical information presented at the meeting, explain the decisions taken and prevent the energy crisis from becoming another contest of competing rumours.
August will also be the month when several of July’s announcements begin meeting their deadlines.
The recovery plan approved by the European Union must produce verified reforms and completed investments before the facility closes. The government will have to show how much of the available funding has been secured and which projects remain at risk because of delays inherited from the previous administration.
At the Foreign Ministry, thirty-seven recalls must now be followed by appointments. The choices for Washington, Moscow and Kyiv will reveal whether Anita Orbán’s promised professional renewal reaches beyond the dismissal notices. The relevant evidence will be found in the careers, expertise and independence of the people selected.
As summer reaches its final weeks, the Health Ministry also owes the public another accounting of the cooling programme. Hegedűs has reported eleven completed projects and ten more already operating; the next update should show how many of the remaining sites have advanced beyond drawings and whether the systems installed during the heatwave are functioning as promised.
Meanwhile, the railway programme begins its slower passage through design, procurement and permits. The M3 extension has a narrow financing window, and the government has roughly six months to select a contractor if the shortened route to Rákospalota-Újpest is to remain credible.
By the end of August, the new government will have fewer opportunities to rely on the exhilaration of its first announcements. The grid will have faced its first national emergency, European milestones will have reached their deadline and the diplomatic appointments will begin revealing what professional renewal means in practice.
A republic at human temperature
At the Jávorszky Ödön Hospital, four air-conditioning units are now cooling the emergency waiting areas and the triage room.
There is nothing grand about them, which is precisely why I keep returning to them. Hungarian politics spent years producing immense declarations while the physical country deteriorated beneath them. Billboards promised strength and sovereignty while patients waited in overheated wards and passengers sat inside trains whose air-conditioning had surrendered somewhere outside Szolnok.
July began to alter that relationship between political language and ordinary experience. The first evidence appeared in rooms that became cooler and in European funding that became accessible again. It appeared in a railway programme with identified financing, in diplomatic posts cleared for new appointments and in a government willing to revise its hospital plan after discovering that the original survey had missed too much.
Then the Danube fell and placed every achievement inside a harsher landscape.
Hungary is rebuilding public services while the environmental conditions beneath them are changing. The country must modernise its hospitals and railways while preparing for longer heatwaves, weaker river flows and rising electricity demand. It must reduce an energy dependence that previous governments described as unavoidable, even as Europe removes Russian gas from its market and Paks II advances through contracts signed with Rosatom.
The completed hospital work deserves recognition. The larger programmes now require scrutiny until funding produces finished infrastructure and appointments produce credible institutions.
Last month, I measured Hungary’s transition through constitutional clauses and public offices. July brought the transition closer to ordinary life. It could be felt in the temperature of a hospital ward, seen in the falling Danube and heard in the announcement that Paks would stop generating electricity.
I still believe four air conditioners are a good place to begin.
They will not rescue Hungarian healthcare, yet they show what progress looks like before anyone finds a heroic name for it. A room is safer than it was a month earlier. Patients and staff feel the change immediately.
The same standard should now be applied everywhere else.
By next summer, Hungary should have more hospital wards that remain usable during extreme heat, more electricity that survives the journey beyond sunset and a clearer account of how the country intends to loosen Moscow’s grip on its energy supply.
July showed that repair has begun.
August will reveal how far the government can carry it while the temperature rises.
My line of the month
During his parliamentary speech on 13 July, Magyar learned that Gergely Gulyás had resigned as leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group. He looked across the chamber and addressed him directly:
“Today is a great day, Mr Group Leader. From today, you are a free man.”