Socialists: New family policy measures only benefit wealthy

The opposition Socialists said new family policy measures announced by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Sunday would only benefit the wealthy and they constituted a government attempt “to cover up the failure of the slave law”.

Referring to recent legislation on overtime, dubbed “slave law”, Socialist lawmaker Lajos Korozs told a press conference that the ruling Fidesz party had come to realise that the law was bad move, leading to the potential loss of some 500,000 voters.

So now they are making big promises, Korozs, who is head of parliament’s welfare committee, said. But in reality they won’t help the majority of people, he said.

The Socialist politician insisted that “oligarchs and the wives of the ruling Fidesz elite” would not only be exempt from personal income tax but they would reap even more public money on top of that.

The expansion of creche places to 18,000 and the establishment of creches in every village throughout Hungary were promises already made in the previous government term, he said. Of 18,000 places, only one thousand places have been created, and it will be impossible to fulfil the new promise to create 70,000 places by 2021, he added.