Has the emigration in Hungary reached a turning point?
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The Demographic Research Institute of the Hungarian Central Statistics Office reported recently that the percentage of emigration dropped in the recent few years and many people who left Hungary in the past years come back. The Central Statistics Office is pleased with the positive change and hopes that this tendency will become permanent.
According to portfolio.hu, in the past days, two studies about Hungary’s demographic situation were published by the Central Statistics Office. These studies show that Hungary was definitely an emigrating country at the beginning of 2000. In 2007 approximately 25,000 Hungarian citizens left the country and started a new life, mostly in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. In 2010 nearly 50,000 citizens emigrated to Germany and Austria. In 2017 approximately 12,000 Hungarian born citizen lived in Austria and 10,000 in the United Kingdom. After the elections in April, it was a big dilemma whether Hungarian citizens’ interest turned to emigration or not. In June OECD reported that approximately 1 million people left Hungary in the past decade.
At the beginning of 2017, nearly 461 thousand Hungarian citizens lived in Switzerland.
In 2013 the percentage of emigration started to decrease. Between 2014 and 2015, emigration was no longer an issue in Hungary and in 2016 its percentage continued to decrease rapidly. Besides the rapid decreasing of emigration, many people started to come back to Hungary, although the exact number is hard to estimate.
Probably not. Some estimates indicate that Hungary’s population may be down to no more than 6,000 by 2050. This is not only a problem for Hungary, but for all of Eastern Europe, which is being depopulated from Latvia to Bulgaria. The reasons are both economic and issues regarding security. both national and personal. The decline in population represents serious economic and military challenges to the entire region. People are moving to Western Europe.