“In 2010, Hungary had to be rescued from a state of economic, political and moral crisis”, the Ministry of Human Capacities’ State Secretary for Family and Youth Affairs, Katalin Novák said in Dublin on Tuesday.

The State Secretary held a lecture at a high-level professional forum in the Irish capital. In a telephone statement to Hungarian news agency MTI following the event, she said that during her lecture she had highlighted the fact that for ten years now the Hungarian government has been working to improve the living conditions of families and to ensure that families “can take a step forward year after year”.

According to Ms. Novák, the goal of this policy is “to ensure that young people who are thinking of starting a family receive all possible support towards this end so that they can have as many children as they would like, and when they would like to”.

“This is why Hungary is spending some 5 percent of its budget on supporting families, which is almost double the average amount spent by developed countries, and some 2.5 times the sum spent on this purpose by the government in 2010”, the State Secretary said in her lecture.

She said that news of the Family Protection Action Plan introduced last year had reached a lot of people, they regard it as worthy of attention in many foreign countries, and the participants of Tuesday’s expert event in Dublin also showed interest in it.

In her lecture, she stressed that in Hungary there is national agreement on the fact that supporting families and money spent on the birth of new children is the best investment. She also told those present that there has been a twenty percent increase in the desire to have children, the number of marriages is at a forty-year high, and both abortions and divorces are at an all-time low.

Ms. Novák, who in recent months has also visited the United States and Germany, emphasised that even she is surprised that so many people know about what is happening in Hungary, and although the government has not set as its goal that Hungarian family policy should become a role model and a basis of reference at international level, this is nevertheless what has happened. “Today, Hungary is a basis of reference when it comes to family-centric governance”, she added.

“What makes Hungarian family policy a role model abroad is that family-centric funding is going hand-in-hand with successful economic policy”, she stated, explaining that people abroad can also see that when the policy was launched the rate of unemployment in Hungary was over 11 percent, but today is only 3.3 percent. “At the time, we couldn’t even dream of economic growth, but today our rate of growth is 4-5 percent year after year, and our budget deficit is continuously under 3 percent, which was certainly not characteristic of the period preceding 2010”, the State Secretary emphasised.

Mr. Novák told MTI that during her trip to Ireland she met with conservative thinkers who were sad to report on the fact that Ireland is no longer a model state when it comes to family policy, although this used to be the case with relation to the number of births and the support provided to families. According to her hosts, Ireland now finds itself distanced from these goals and they would like the process to be reversed and for the country to once again turn towards being family centric.

“This was also the apropos for my visit, because if I am given the opportunity to report on Hungarian family policy to those who show interest in it, then I will always do my best to do so”, Ms. Novák said.

(MTI)