The Danube River reached record low levels across central Europe by August 5-6, 2026, threatening both Romania's Cernavoda and Hungary's Paks nuclear plants; Romania's military completed an unprecedented operation to blast a rock formation from the riverbed to keep Cernavoda's cooling water intake functioning; as of August 6 the plant director said Unit 2 could be shut down in 5-6 days if the river keeps dropping; the drought is also disrupting Rhine freight and Germany's chemical industry
Italy placed all its major cities under its highest-tier health alert on August 6 as another heat episode struck Europe, while Hungary introduced emergency energy-saving measures as soaring temperatures strained electricity supplies; the Pakistani Tribune reports France and Spain have been hardest hit; the Danube's record-low water levels are compounding the strain on power and transport across central Europe
Hungary's Prime Minister Péter Magyar on August 7 publicly showed a 2022 government document he says proves Viktor Orbán's administration knew Hungary's electricity grid was on the brink of collapse and did nothing for four years; the disclosure follows a summer power crisis; Magyar's government has also approved a new energy development plan covering storage, grid upgrades and renewables
The European Commission said on August 3 it stood ready to convene emergency electricity coordination talks after Hungary's Paks Nuclear Power Plant stopped generating, removing nearly half of Hungary's total electricity capacity; in a separate development, Hungarian independent media published a recording in which a former Fidesz minister admitted the Orbán government had been warned of severe water shortages and took no preparatory action
Prime Minister Peter Magyar confirmed on the night of August 1 that Hungary's Paks Nuclear Power Plant would shut down completely on Sunday; the penultimate of four reactor units was disconnected at 1:30am Sunday, leaving only one unit running; earlier on August 1, two units had already shut down due to record-low Danube water levels, dropping Paks to about 25% of its 2,000 MW capacity; a full stop would be the first in Paks's 44-year history and analysts warned of a regional electricity price surge across Central Europe
Hungary began shutting down Unit 3 at the Paks Nuclear Power Plant on July 29 after the Danube fell to record-low water levels, cutting the plant's output to about 60 percent of capacity; the government said even a complete Paks shutdown would not endanger household electricity supply, but began compiling a list of industrial consumers whose power and water use could be restricted; Romania's Cernavoda nuclear plant also took a reactor offline; EU Copernicus satellite images showed the Danube's water level visually narrowed from the same period a year before
Hungary's National Assembly voted on July 28 to establish the Nemzeti Vagyonvisszaszerzési és Vagyonvédelmi Hivatal, a National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office with broad powers to claw back public assets, the Hungarian independent outlet Telex reported; the vote is a central Tisza Party campaign promise; in a separate vote parliament elected Pál Sonnevend as a Constitutional Court judge with 138 votes for and 6 against, with Fidesz boycotting both votes
Russia's President Vladimir Putin told Russian Navy officers on July 26 that he was 'confident' Ukraine would 'sooner or later' lose its western territories, which he described as lands Stalin gifted to Soviet Ukraine after WWII; Poland's Foreign Ministry called it 'cynical' disinformation designed to split Warsaw from Kyiv; Hungary and Romania, also named, have not responded
Chief Prosecutor Gábor Bálint Nagy submitted his resignation on July 23 warning that 'politics is swallowing justice,' as Prime Minister Péter Magyar's government simultaneously ordered a full audit of Hungary's State Audit Office, filed criminal complaints over Orbán-era Eximbank loans, and capped state company executive pay at the PM's own salary level
Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar announced on July 20 that he would ask Judit Polgar, the greatest female chess player of all time, to serve as Hungary's interim president during the drafting of a new constitution; the announcement came one day after former President Tamás Sulyok signed a constitutional amendment ending his own term; Polgar had not yet responded as of reporting
The European Commission's annual rule-of-law report, published July 17, found Hungary had made significant progress under Prime Minister Peter Magyar, including joining the European Public Prosecutor's Office, but issued fresh warnings about judicial independence and media freedom that remain unaddressed
Péter Szijjártó, Hungary's foreign minister for twelve years and architect of Budapest's China ties, announced on July 15 that he resigned his parliamentary seat to take an international executive role at BYD, the world's largest electric vehicle maker, ahead of BYD's planned production launch in Hungary
EU finance ministers at ECOFIN on July 10 approved Hungary's revised Recovery and Resilience Plan, clearing the last Council-level hurdle for Prime Minister Péter Magyar's government to receive up to €10 billion in EU post-pandemic funding; payments remain conditional on rule-of-law reforms Hungary must complete by the end of August
Hungary's prime minister from 1998 to 2002 and 2010 to 2026, Orbán built Europe's defining model of illiberal democracy before losing power in Hungary's April 2026 landslide election.
An eight-day shutdown of the only remaining transit route foreshadows the EU's full Russian-gas phase-out by 2028
Brussels unfroze nearly all aid suspended under Viktor Orbán on 29 May 2026 after Péter Magyar's Tisza government fulfilled anti-corruption commitments, joined the European Public Prosecutor's Office, and dropped Hungary's veto on an EU loan to Ukraine
An 11 April landslide hands the EU a new Budapest, unblocking Ukraine aid while refusing to fast-track Kyiv's accession