“Without families and children, the national community will disappear.”
Hungary’s populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán says the “sickness of Europe” is the continent’s native population decline as he urged for more incentives to encourage citizens to have children.
During a speech at Budapest’s 3rd Demographic Summit, Orbán warned that the biggest problem Europe faced was demographic suicide.
“Why is this the case? It’s most certainly not because of some sickness of Christian civilization – after all, the number of Christians are rising all around the world. This is a sickness of Europe in general,” he said.
The Prime Minister said that the solution was not to import vast numbers of migrants, asserting, “We must never accept population exchange.”
According to Orbán, the remedy should be to ensure that families were financially rewarded for having children, not punished.
“We win only if we can build a system where those who bear children live significantly better than if they hadn’t started a family,” he said.
Orbán emphasized that the west was doomed if the current model of atomization and demographic decline isn’t halted.
“Without families and children, the national community will disappear,” said Orbán, adding, “and if a nation disappears, something irreplaceable will disappear from the world.”
As we previously highlighted, as part an effort to boost the country’s population without having to rely on mass migration, Hungary will hand out €30,600 to married couples who have three or more children.
A married couple receives the €30,600 as a loan from the government upon getting married. The loan then has to be repaid until the couple has three children. At this point, the debt is completely forgiven.