Péter Magyar said during the parliamentary election campaign that he does not want Hungary to remain an assembly-line economy with low value-added jobs. He believes the Hungarian economy should create more high value-added positions. As a result, fewer non-EU guest workers would be needed, while more Hungarians could return home from abroad.
Péter Magyar’s government aims to create high value-added jobs
New Economy and Energy Minister István Kapitány and Finance Minister András Kármán share the view that Hungary should become a modern economy built on high value-added jobs. Experts agree that they would seek to attract such investments, rather than creating new jobs in sectors such as manufacturing or processing.
The Orbán governments took a different approach. They aimed to create as many jobs as possible through investments from all parts of the world — including large-scale projects from China and India — mostly generating low-paid employment. As a result, many Hungarians moved abroad in search of higher wages. The surge in investment led to sectoral labour shortages, and vacant positions were filled by non-EEA guest workers. Their number has now reached over 120,000–130,000.
As we wrote in a separate article, their presence is essential to Hungary’s economy, even in sectors such as healthcare, where their numbers are relatively low. Due to chronic labour shortages, their absence could significantly affect service levels. In the processing industry, guest workers are indispensable, as they are in Hungarian agriculture — particularly during harvest periods — and in livestock farming, including cattle herding and the dairy sector.
Guest workers’ fate to be decided next week
The Magyar government said during the election campaign that it would halt the inflow of guest workers from 1 June and review the entire system. The issue was also raised at yesterday’s cabinet meeting. According to a government spokesperson, a decision on restricting the employment of guest workers from outside the European Union is expected at a cabinet meeting next week.
Have you read this? Péter Magyar’s long press conference: asbestos pollution, false state budget data, EU funds, price caps, too many diplomatic passports
The prime minister has asked the Minister for Economy and Energy and the Minister for Social and Family Affairs to coordinate discussions on work permits for non-EU nationals with the relevant ministries. The aim is to ensure that guest workers meet the needs of Hungarian businesses while preventing the development of an economic model reliant on their mass employment, she added.
The Ministries of the Interior, Finance, Agriculture, Social and Family Affairs, Economy and Energy, and Justice will be involved in the assessment, government spokesperson Anita Köböl added.
If you missed it: No way back to power? New poll says former PM Orbán’s Fidesz may vanish
PM Péter Magyar calls on Hungary’s top judge to resign over luxury renovation scandal – PHOTOS
I think it’s both disgraceful and worrying that young Hungarians apparently consider it beneath them to get on a bicycle, pedal for a few minutes to a restaurant, pick up a package, and pedal away for another few minutes to someone’s home. Or lay one brick on top of another.
The root cause of such behavior and attitudes needs to be ascertained and rectified.
However, these “guest workers” are not the problem, although they should be recruited in places much closer to home than South Asia!
The problem are illegal aliens whose potential presence in Hungary would be a clear and present danger to us all. That happening must be resisted at all costs.
I agree with you, Dear Michael, that illegal aliens are a life and death issue for The West.
Guest workers, however, are also dangerous.
As a White Southerner, I have, my whole lifelong, heard about the dangers and evils of my people’s past, with regards to Negro slavery, and yet : the Yankee United States, controlled by those who cannot be mentioned, is the greatest slave empire ever known to man.
Why, endless tens of millions of non-Whites are here, and all under the various guises of legality – from the supposedly illegals, who will never be deported, to the unbelievable amount of guest workers who have completely undermined the position of my children – they unable to experience anything like the economic opportunity, or cultural stability, I knew as a young man.
The notion that guest-workers are ‘needed’, is plain lunacy.
No, what is needed is an economic policy that pays people a living wage – no matter what they do from 9-5.
As Csoth Magdolna likes to say : ‘We build an economy to serve a people, NOT … a people to serve an economy.’