Orbán Says Hungary Resolute In Protecting Families

Europe is facing a demographic winter, a demographic ice age, speakers at the Demographic Summit in Budapest warned on Thursday, September 14th, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán expressing his hope that family-friendly, conservative forces will strengthen during next year’s European Parliament elections.

This is the fifth time Hungary has organised the three-day summit. The conservative Hungarian governing party Fidesz—in power since 2010—has made it a priority to support families and encourage them to raise more children through a myriad of welfare policies, including a tax exemption for mothers of four or more children and housing support for families. Though Hungary has been able to increase its average fertility rate from 1.2 in 2010 to 1.6 in 2021, the rate is still far below the level of 2.1 births per woman needed to ensure a broadly stable population.

Viktor Orbán alluded to this fact in his speech on Thursday, saying that Hungary has been able to slow down population decline, but it has not been able to reverse the trend, therefore new tools are needed to develop family policy. He emphasised that organising summits like these are not only necessary but should be an obligation to protect the future of our civilisation. 

He said the European Union institutions are not focusing on the most important issue, the demographic crisis, but are “dealing with all other kinds of tomfoolery”, like gender quotas or carbon quotas, like the European Parliament ensuring in a resolution that “transgender men and non-binary persons may also undergo pregnancy”, or the European Commission asking staff members to refrain from using the word ‘Christmas’ (a guideline later withdrawn). The liberal, progressive elite “believe families, nations and believing in God are a form of despotism, because they confine individual desires,” Orbán said.

Viktor Orbán explained that his government used legal tools, not just economic tools to create a family-friendly nation: the parliament enshrined in the constitution the protection “of the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman”, and the fact that “the mother is a woman, the father a man”. The Prime Minister said it is sad that something as evident as this has to be laid down in law. 

Hungary has been criticised by left-liberal Western politicians and European institutions for its child protection law adopted in 2021 which protects children from gender ideology in schools. 

“They should know that in international politics Hungary is the loudest advocate for families and the issue of demography. This won’t change, no matter how the liberal world attacks the Hungarian government. This only makes us more resolute,”, the Prime Minister emphasised:

There is a need to change direction, we need to ensure that family-friendly, conservative forces come to power in as many European countries as possible. I hope family-friendly forces win the European Parliament elections.

In her speech, conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni praised Hungary for its policies. “Demography is not just an issue, it is the issue on which our nations’ future depends,” Meloni said, calling the European projections on demography worrying. 

Indeed, the latest report from the EU’s statistics office foresees the bloc’s population decreasing to 420 million in 2100, with more people aged over 80 than people under 20. No wonder many EU leaders are focusing on migration as a possible solution to the continent’s problems. In her State of the Union speech on Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe needs “qualified migration” because of labour shortages.

“It is claimed that migration is a solution. I do not agree. I think great nations and great people must take responsibilities to build their own future,” Giorgia Meloni emphasised. The Prime Minister said that the demographic crisis is not only rooted in the economy but also a widespread cultural approach that is generally hostile to families:

A typical family with children has faded from the media’s spotlight, instead single people are shown as consumers detached from communities. We live in an era where everything that defines our identity—family, religion, nation—is under attack.

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev also talked in his speech of Europe going through an unprecedented demographic change, with European societies facing the challenges of global transformation and migratory pressure that threaten our European Christian identity. 

“Whatever financial, digital or green policies we develop, demography will be the main issue, human capital will be our most important asset,” he said, adding: “Families are fundamental for our societies, they have the responsibility to develop children, to bring them up as reliable citizens for our countries.”

Hungarian President Katalin Novák said Hungarians live in a country where human life is valued, and child-raising mothers and fathers are held in high esteem. The number of marriages have doubled, the number of abortions have halved, families’ quality of life has increased. But our future is in danger, she warned, pointing to an approaching demographic ice age. “If childlessness becomes the normality, our world will fall apart”, she said.

Keynote speaker, world-famous Canadian psychologist and free-speech advocate Jordan Peterson talked in more abstract terms, stating that the lack of hierarchical structures and social relations drive people to desolateness. “When conservatives say family is the bedrock of society, they’re right,” he said:

You need someone allied with you to help you negotiate the terrible storms of life. You need a stable couple to bring children into the world. Minimal family is a form of sanity and identity. You need a child, a family, a community, otherwise there’s no hope for society.