LMP promises beneficial family policy programme

Guaranteeing wages sufficient to provide for families will be green opposition LMP’s priority goal if the party is elected to government in the April general election, party co-leader and prime minister candidate Bernadett Szél told a press conference in Budapest on Wednesday.

Currently, two thirds of Hungarian families live in poverty, she said. If it comes to power, LMP will implement a general wage hike, raising the minimum wage by 26,000 forints (EUR 84) and the average wage by 36,000. It will also raise wages in the public sector and reintroduce progressive taxation, she said.

Szél insisted that the family subsidy system needs to be reformed, with part of the present tax discounts being retained and expanded. LMP would double the allowance for families raising one child to provide incentive for having further children, she said. The family allowance and the child-care allowance would be raised by 30 percent, she said adding that the family allowance would be provided until the child’s 24th year if they attend higher education.

LMP will also raise the capacity of creches and improve their funding, she said.

Single parents’ child subsidies would be raised by 45 percent. The party would re-regulate the child support system to better serve the interests of the parent with custody rights, and reform creches so that they adapt better to work time, she said.

LMP also plans to launch a social housing scheme to support the 300,000 families currently waiting to obtain affordable housing, and would prohibit the eviction of families without replacement housing, she said.

LMP would uphold the parts of Fidesz’s home purchase subsidy programme (CSOK) that support reconstruction and enlargement, but scrap subsidies for new home constructions, which she said supports the construction industry and not the citizens in need of help to acquire sufficient housing. These funds would also go into government housing projects, she said.

Szél called ruling Fidesz’s programme “anti-family”, failing to bring about demographic changes.

Commenting on the latest billboard campaign of ruling Fidesz, Szél said her party has no plans to dismantle the fence along Hungary’s southern border “because the state of affairs in the country and the world do not allow it.” The hate campaign, however, has to be stopped, she said. “All Fidesz can do is sow fear,” she said. noting that the ruling party had not yet come forward with an election programme.

In response, Fidesz said that LMP “would not only dismantle the fence but also scrap the home purchase subsidy. … LMP would doubtless use that money for accepting migrants instead of supporting housing for Hungarian families,” the ruling party said.

Source: MTI