Budapest Demographic Summit held life in an alternate reality, says Jobbik MEP

Consequently, it certainly appears odd how Viktor Orbán’s government keeps boasting about its achievements to make Hungary a great place for families over the past ten years, right when hundreds of thousands of Hungarians migrated to Western Europe.

Naturally, neither Hungarian Minister for Families Katalin Novák, the event’s only female speaker, nor Viktor Orbán had to fear being held to account for that by any of the guests, whose list features such “recognized” names as former US Vice President Mike Pence as well as Orbán’s old pals: Slovenia’s ex-convict Prime Minister Janez Janša, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, whose country has no opposition in the parliament, and extremist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who is generally considered by the international public as a Russian puppet. All these politicians, who are so busy scourging liberals, depicting Brussels as an anti-family conspirator and talking about the importance of supporting families, carefully avoided the problem that if the protection of families is so important for them, then how can all their countries (apart from Mike Pence’s homeland) be on the brink of a demographic disaster while a lot of their people emigrate to the supposedly anti-family and Marxist Western Europe where children are, according to Orbán, “misguided”.

As a Hungarian citizen and a centre-right, conservative politician, I also believe it’s important to support families. On the other hand, Orbán’s and his guests’ delusional and unrealistic speculations appear to me as the last self-aggrandizing gestures of a dictatorship on the verge of its final collapse.

Back in 2017, when my partners and I launched the Citizens’ Initiative for a European Wage Union, our goal was to let Hungary and the states of the Central European region finally catch up with Western Europe in terms of their economies and living standards as well. 

We set this goal because we saw we had no other chance. If the people of Central Europe can’t make a decent living that is worthy of a human being and can’t enjoy the same workers’ rights as in Western Europe, our countries will soon be empty. At the time, Fidesz spared no effort to undermine this initiative.

In today’s Hungary, the government’s oft-quoted family support system mainly consists of loan schemes offered to our young people. While a lot of families become indebted, more and more people decide they want to start their lives neither on a loan nor on a pittance handed out by the government. They want decent salaries instead. For that, they need to go to Western Europe. 

As long as this situation remains, Orbán’s and his friends’ far-right platitudes are no more than a deception. It is an alternate reality; something that can’t be sustained forever.