Hungary faces record heat, nuclear fears and a public media scandal ahead of August presidential vote (Day 87 of the Tisza government)

A few months ago, we launched our series in which we provided weekly summaries of the news from Hungary’s election campaign. The series continues so that we can report on developments following the historic election and on the steps taken by the new Tisza government. This week, we cover the following topics: Drought, heat, energy crisis – Hungarians are performing well. Documents confirm news manipulation. Asset recovery has begun. On 11 August the Hungarian parliament will elect a new head of state. Droughts, heat and Hungary’s energy crisis The prolonged heatwave and the dramatic drop in the River Danube’s water level have confronted Hungary with an unprecedented energy challenge, while the public is earning top marks for disciplined energy saving. On Monday, the Tisza government took steps to recover billions siphoned off under the National System of Cooperation (NER). The exposure of the Hungarian News Agency MTI’s entrenched practice of news manipulation has also made waves, as has the fact that, following a Facebook comment by Péter Magyar, the interim management of public media withdrew two appointments. Hungary has been in a state of emergency for nine days with the prolonged drought and extreme heat leaving the country grappling with an energy crisis unlike anything seen before. Due to the Danube’s record-breaking low water level, Hungarians were warned that the Paks nuclear power plant would be temporarily shut down. The country has been tracking the Danube’s water level millimetre by millimetre for days, but so far the plant has not had to be fully shut down; one turbine is still operating. The plant, with an output of 2,000 megawatts, provides around 45 percent of the electricity generated in Hungary. Magyar first informed the public about the energy crisis and the protective measures in a video message on 29 July. Since then, he has posted similar videos several times a day on his social media page about the current situation and government measures. Thanks in part to the regular and exhaustive communication, conspiracy theories about the dangers posed by a possible full shutdown of the Paks plant after 44 years have struggled to gain traction.[lock] As a first step, the government asked large companies and businesses to reduce or reschedule their electricity consumption. Several hundred large companies, firms and municipalities joined the call, and the Hungarian State Railways also restricted freight transport. Magyar has repeatedly stressed that Hungary’s electricity supply is secure, while at the same time calling on households to save energy. Ágnes Forsthoffer, the parliamentary speaker and interim president – who also called for unity – requested a briefing from the prime minister and invited the leaders of the parliamentary groups to the consultation. János Bóka, leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group, blamed the new government formed in May for the situation: “It would have been the task of the Tisza government to foresee the current situation and prepare for it.” “Previous governments cannot assume responsibility for solving in advance, on behalf of the government currently in office, every foreseeable and unforeseeable problem and challenge,” Bóka said. It is good news that the public is fully cooperating with the government’s efforts at protection: surveys show that households have reduced both their energy use and their consumption of drinking water. The bad news, however, is that although forecasts predict some slight relief, there is no immediate prospect of any precipitation at all, and temperatures in Hungary are expected to remain persistently above 30 degrees. The Danube’s water level may rise thanks to expected rainfall in the Austrian catchment areas. In response, the government has adopted a comprehensive energy development plan. It would expand energy storage capacities, modernise the electricity grid, and launch wind energy and geothermal investments. Nearly 870 billion forints have been earmarked for these developments. Documents confirm news manipulation On 7 July, news programmes were suspended on the channels of Hungarian public television. Since then, M1 has been broadcasting films, with current news appearing only in a lower ticker. Behind the scenes, the interim management of public media is working to relaunch the M1 news bulletin, Híradó, from the second half of August. On Monday (3 August) it emerged that the editor-in-chief of the revamped Híradó would be Gábor Hajdú and its anchor would be Miklós Borsa. Hajdú is a communications specialist for the Talentis Group, which is linked to the business empire of Lőrinc Mészáros, and previously worked at the pro-Fidesz channels Hír TV and Echo TV. Miklós Borsa has worked at Nap TV, TV2 (part of the Fidesz media orbit), and the Duna TV news bulletin, and he has also hosted programmes on M1. He left in 2015 after being beaten up because of his work as a newsreader. The announcement caused widespread outrage. Under one article discussing the two men’s appointments, prime minister Magyar simply commented: “I don’t think so...”. On Tuesday, in a terse statement, public media revoked the appointments of Hajdú and Borsa. “The renewed public media’s news service must restore society’s trust. Public media strives, even during the transitional period, to create media that also meets society’s needs,” they said. What has happened raises several questions. One is on what logic the interim management of public media considered Hajdú suitable for the editor-in-chief’s post. Borsa himself acknowledged in an interview that he read out news items in M1’s Híradó which he knew were lies. It is not surprising that there was public outrage to the news of their return. On the other hand, it is also unacceptable that the supposedly independent public media – whose operations politics is, in principle, not allowed to interfere with – most likely backed down from the two appointments under political pressure. “If it is the prime minister who decides who can (or cannot) be the head of public television, then it is government television,” says analyst Gábor Török. If the appointments were indeed withdrawn as a result of the prime minister’s comment, then this is not a transformation of public media, but the continuation of practices introduced under the previous system. Hungarian public media is in a transitional period that is difficult to interpret even legally: its interim management is recruiting new staff while the new director-general and news director are soon to be selected through an open competition. Similar mistakes could be avoided if the staff of the newly built and genuinely independent public media – from editors-in-chief through reporters to newsreaders – were all selected via open calls. The other scandal of the week is also linked to public media. Over the years, a group of journalists at the Hungarian News Agency (MTI) compiled a near 500-page document detailing how news was manipulated at the agency under the Orbán governments. The journalists handed the collected material over to the new management of MTVA, on the basis of which the management of Duna Médiaszolgáltató Zrt. ordered an internal investigation. For more than ten years, the group collected correspondence, emails and chat logs that prove how news was manipulated, falsified and suppressed at MTI, which is considered one of the country’s most important sources of news. The documents present editorial instructions aimed at withholding certain news items, altering their content or rewriting them according to specific criteria. In countless public, economic and foreign policy stories, editorial decisions were taken on political grounds. Public media also published excerpts from the collection. In one letter, Bertalan Havasi, press chief to Viktor Orbán, requested the publication of a news item for which he had already written the headline and lead in advance for MTI. In another letter, former foreign ministry spokesperson Máté Paczolay tells MTI’s Moscow correspondent that when reporting on talks between Péter Szijjártó and Sergei Lavrov, he should not ask Lavrov any questions. Paczolay writes that “in line with the agreement we do not ask questions of the Russian side”, and that Szijjártó’s side will send a press release, so it will be enough to write up Lavrov’s part. The correspondent then asks: “So apart from asking questions I have no job to do?” There was also a blacklist: the German Die Welt was banned in April 2018, and the international NGOs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were blacklisted on 8 November 2019. Based on earlier leaks, the public had already suspected that public media was being run by Antal Rogán, the minister heading the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office. Now, however, it has obtained evidence of news manipulation as well. “Colleagues have not done anything more filthy or more vile in past decades than this faceless, nameless ‘working group’. For 10 years they pocketed multi-million salaries, serving and servicing that ‘damned Orbán system’, while insidiously collecting data and information about their own colleagues. For 10 years!!!! This is the absolute bottom!” – is how Beatrix Siklósi, the sacked channel director of Kossuth Radio reacted to the compiled documents. Asset recovery has begun On Monday, Magyar announced that the Tisza government is withdrawing from the Orbán government’s multi-hundred-billion-forint real estate deal in Zugló and will demand back from the contractor the 300 billion forints disbursed by Fidesz, to use the money for energy, transport or healthcare investments. The case concerns an office complex in Budapest’s Zugló district, the Zugló City Centre project, built on a seven-hectare site behind Bosnyák Square. It was originally intended to serve as a new district centre and was constructed by the Bayer Construct group, owned by billionaire entrepreneur Attila Balázs, who belongs to the NER. In 2021 the government declared the project an investment of priority importance for the national economy: in six decrees it laid down the construction rules, the townscape requirements and the design of public spaces, and exempted the parcel formation from local regulations. Seven huge office buildings and the Zenit Corso shopping centre, opened in autumn 2025, were built; the state intended to create a new government quarter in the complex. The Tisza government launched a comprehensive legal and financial review of the investment and, as a result, decided not to conclude the final sales contract for the office buildings, stating that the developer failed to meet its contractual obligations by the deadline. The Hungarian National Asset Management Inc. (MNV) also found other grounds for objection, so the Hungarian state can lawfully withdraw from the contract. The original government decision referred to a maximum purchase price of 244 billion forints, but the final price came to more than 254 billion forints plus VAT. According to the documents, the Orbán government has already paid out around 315 billion forints over the course of the entire project – as stated on the Hungarian government’s website. Under the contract, if the developer fails to meet its obligations by the deadline, the instalments of the purchase price already paid must be refunded, the state also gets back double the deposit, is entitled to a penalty amounting to 10 percent of the net maximum purchase price, and may make further claims for damages. The owner of Bayer Construct Zrt, Attila Balázs, was already generating billions in turnover with his company in the 2010s, but he achieved outstanding business results after 2016, when the firm won several major state construction contracts and was present as a subcontractor in many places. It worked on several railway and road construction projects, on the building of the Puskás Arena and the sports park on Kerepesi Road, and also received orders from the private market. According to Forbes magazine, the group’s profit exceeded 20 billion forints in 2024. Until now, such results had been achieved only by NER oligarchs Lőrinc Mészáros, László Szíjj or István Garancsi. The Viastein company, part of the Bayer group, is owned 50–50 percent by Balázs and EUB-RESZ Zrt. Journalists at Válasz Online managed to establish clearly that the latter belongs to the circle around Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law, István Tiborcz. EUB-RESZ Zrt. became an owner of Viastein in August 2016, that is, before the group’s fortunes really took off. Hungarian parliament elects a new head of state The Tisza parliamentary group has proposed that deputy speaker Anikó Hallerné Nagy, who is performing the duties of speaker of the house, schedule presidential elections for 11 August. It is still unclear who the group will nominate for the post as party discussions are still ongoing. Since the Polgár affair ended in fiasco, the prime minister has been far more cautious: although he posted joint photos with three potential presidential candidates, he was very careful not to name any of them as an explicit nominee. Magyar posted a joint photo with Ignác Romsics, the historian awarded the Széchenyi Prize (who does not consider himself suitable for the post), as well as with Botond Fülöp, the lawyer who became known under the name “Vidéki prókátor” (country attorney), who played a key role in the pardon affair that led to the resignation of Katalin Novák. On Wednesday, Magyar met with András Baka, the former president of the Supreme Court. Baka was removed by Fidesz from the presidency of the Supreme Court more than three years before the end of his mandate so they could install their own nominee at the head of the body. The president of the republic is elected by a two-thirds majority of members of parliament in a secret ballot. To become a candidate, a person must be supported by at least one fifth of MPs, that is, by 40 members. Besides the Tisza Party, only the 44-strong Fidesz parliamentary group would be able to nominate a president of the republic on its own; KDNP and Mi Hazánk cannot do so without Fidesz. Fidesz and KDNP have previously indicated that they will boycott the presidential election, because they consider the removal of Tamás Sulyok illegitimate. “It’s not worth the bother. From a constitutional-law perspective it is invalid, therefore it is pointless to hold a presidential election. There is no vacancy in the post. The last Hungarian president of the republic elected in a legitimate way is called Tamás Sulyok,” Fidesz responded. On Tuesday, thanks to its two-thirds majority, parliament will be able to elect Hungary’s new president of the republic.