Opposition lawmakers slam government family support concept

Budapest, May 25 (MTI) – Lawmakers of the opposition LMP and Együtt parties criticised the government’s family support concept as being “narrow-minded” and targeted in funding, on Thursday, before the opening of an international family summit in Budapest.

With its family support policy aimed at giving “ideological education” to society, the government ignores reality, a co-leader of LMP told a press conference.

The Budapest summit will champion the traditional family model, which is represented today by merely 39 percent of Hungarian families, Bernadett Szél said.

Single-parent families, accounting for 20 percent of all, are in the biggest trouble, she said, calling for differentiated rises in across-the-board family allowances.

Együtt lawmaker Zsuzsanna Szelényi slammed the government’s family concept as “narrow-minded, mistaken and failing to consider women an integral part of society”. She urged the government to introduce a child-care benefit scheme for fathers and ratify the Istanbul Convention on preventing domestic violence.

Independent lawmaker Márta Demeter also called for the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. She said the Budapest summit would reflect an “ultra conservative” family concept which goes against the European trend and forces a “peripheral, fundamentalist approach” onto Hungarian society.

Source: MTI