EU youth strategy should address challenges of founding families, says Orbán cabinet

The Hungarian state secretary for family and youth on Monday called for the new EU Youth Strategy to lay more emphasis on the challenges facing young people wanting to start a family, saying that the current demographic situation makes the issue especially pressing.

Katalin Novák spoke at an informal meeting of EU ministers for youth, convened to discuss challenges facing European youth and debate the European Commission’s new EU youth strategy for 2019-2027. The EP is to vote on the strategy in November.

“We should ask ourselves why young people do not have enough children,”

Novák said, adding that the question should be raised not only in Hungary but in Europe as well.

The EU is also working on a programme to motivate young people to explore Europe more, she said.

Talks are under way on the EU budget for the 2021-2027 financial cycle, with a proposal to double the funding for the Erasmus programme, Novák said. It is important that the scheme should not become “elitist” but give as many young people as possible an opportunity to experience living in another EU member state, she said.

The proposal chimes well with the measures of the Hungarian government, she said, which has allocated several times more funding for young people in 2019 than in 2010.

As we wrote about the latest data revealing that the number of Hungarians has decreased in 2017. While a decreasing population is not only true for Hungary – the tendency can be observed in most countries of the European Union – the shocking data reveals that Hungary lost around 20 thousand people in just one year, read more HERE.

Also, we wrote ten days ago, Hungary’s population decline slowed in the first six months of the year compared with the same period in 2017 as both the number of births and the number of deaths decreased, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) reported, read more HERE.

Photo: MTI

Source: MTI