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Budapest Times
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Budapest Times
PM's Political Director: Strong families are key to a strong country
Family support would include strengthening rural communities and infrastructure "so those wanting to live there suffer no disadvantages", Balázs Orbán said. Balázs Orbán, the prime minister's political director, said strong families are key to a strong country. Orbán made that admission during a conference titled Family formation and the future – the geopolitical, cultural and legal dimensions of demographic change, organized by the Danube Institute on Wednesday. 'Family is the foundation of society, and Hungary's government will do everything in its power to support those wanting to raise a family, and those who already have one,' Orbán said on the second day of the conference on Wednesday, adding that the government 'sees mothers as partners in that effort'. Liberal values had led to the weakening of families and so to that of societies', Orbán said. 'They only way to restore national values is to return to traditional values, to strengthen local communities and revive patriotism,' he said. Perspectives are changing in the West, too, Orbán said. Regarding migration, Orbán said liberal migration policy had led to 'growing crime rates and intra-societal tensions'. Hungary had spent some 2 billion forints (EUR 5m) on border protection and built a fence, 'and now we have to pay a million euros a day just because we are protecting our borders,' he said. Meanwhile, 'by weakening family values, the Western world is weakening itself and paying the price in falling birth rates,' he said. Hungary, on the other hand, had built its 'whole politics and economy on families', he said. Family support would include strengthening rural communities and infrastructure 'so those wanting to live there suffer no disadvantages', Orbán said. He said he hoped that the Hungarian example would prove useful in other countries.
Budapest Times
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Budapest Times
Hankó: Hungarian family policy attends to the needs of the unborn and born alike
Balázs Hankó, the culture and innovation minister, said Hungarian family policy attends to the needs of the unborn and born alike. Speaking at an international conference organized by the Danube Institute in Budapest on Tuesday, Hankó said measures enacted by previous governments still cast a shadow over the efforts of the current one, notwithstanding the turning point in Hungarian family policy from 2010. 'Our aim is that those bringing up children should not have a worse standard of life than others without children,' he said at the conference entitled Family Formation – the geopolitical, cultural and legal aspects of demographic changes. Young people must be encouraged to have children, but equally important is for the state to support families and fulfil their needs, he said. Hankó said 'dangerous trends' in the Western world were tied with the promotion of an 'extreme and distorted freedom' that questioned 'traditional values such as marriage and family' while relativising gender roles and gender identity itself. He hailed the new US administration for 'taking powerful steps towards normality'. The EU, however, was still deaf to 'the voice of our times', he added. So values that were clear for centuries, such as 'marriage is the union of a man and a woman', must be legislated for, he said. Hankó also warned of a 'demographic winter' threatening Europe, noting that in 2023 the number of children born in the EU was 15 percent lower than ten years earlier. In Hungary the birth rate fell by only 2 percent during the same period, he added. Immigration may be a short-term fix for population loss, he said, but this was not a sustainable solution. In 2010 Hungary's fertility rate put the country at the bottom of the pile, while now it is in third place owing to the government's family-friendly policies, the minister said. The government is set to spend four times as much on supporting families in 2025 as in 2010, and spending would be further raised if the budget allows for this, he added. The event was addressed by Eduard Habsburg-Lorraine, Hungary's ambassador to the Holy See and the Order of Malta, who highly praised Hungary's family policy.
Boston Globe
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
How ties between the American right and Hungary's strongman proliferated
Related : Advertisement The Heritage Foundation, the group behind Orbán, for his part, The White House declined to answer questions about Hungary. The Hungarian government's press office and its embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Rufo. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, shown speaking in 2023. J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press Many conservatives say there is no reason for them to apologize for or hide their relationships to Hungary, a US ally and member of the European Union, which they say has been unfairly maligned by Democrats and the mainstream press. Hungary, said Daniel J. Mahoney, a former professor at Assumption University in Worcester who received a paid fellowship at the Danube Institute, should be defended 'from its detractors who defame [it] as an oppressive dictatorship.' Some dissent is tolerated. 'Many Hungarian intellectuals and academics are fiercely opposed to [Orbán's] government and often proselytize in the classroom,' Mahoney said. Opposition parties control the mayor's offices in the biggest cities, including Budapest. Advertisement For Mahoney and other Orbán admirers, Hungary is a singular example of a conservative government successfully beating back liberal influences to promote Christian values, national pride, and what they describe as the interests of the common man. In 2018, a Hungarian foundation commissioned Steve Bannon, Trump's former campaign manager and senior adviser, to give a speech at a Budapest conference, according to a contract between Bannon and the foundation. The foundation, which had been hired by the government to organize the conference, agreed to pay Bannon $20,000 plus expenses for himself and his staff. In his speech, Bannon praised Orbán as 'Trump before Trump' and decried the influence of liberal elites. Bannon didn't respond to requests for comment. During the Biden administration, Hungary cultivated wider ties with American conservatives. The Danube Institute, whose parent foundation receives funding from the Hungarian government, offered paid fellowships to leading activists and intellectuals. Among them was Rod Dreher, a longtime columnist with National Review who is a close friend of Tucker Carlson spoke during the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Feszt in 2021 in Esztergom, was enamored of the country, particularly Orbán's leadership, he has written in essays and social media posts, and became an influential promoter of Hungary's policies among US conservatives. Dreher didn't respond to requests for comment. He was also a paid 'agent' of the Danube Institute, according to a contract obtained by the Advertisement The Danube Institute István Kiss, the institute's executive director, said he and his organization are not 'mouthpieces' for the Orbán government. The 'ethos' language in the visiting fellow contracts translated poorly from the original Hungarian, he said. It was meant merely to 'avoid a situation [where] somebody is getting money from us and says bad things about the institute itself,' he said. From Budapest in 2021, Dreher texted Carlson, then the during a recorded Carlson did in fact visit, and made a documentary that was a sensation in conservative circles and further elevated Orbán within the American right. It portrayed Hungary as a fundamentally conservative country with a no-nonsense border policy and an unapologetic embrace of its Christian identity. Titled 'Hungary vs. Soros: The Fight for Civilization,' it depicted Soros, a long-time bogeyman for the right, as working from the shadows to finance a wave of migration to destabilize the country. (Soros is Jewish, and the head of the Anti-Defamation League In the three years since Carlson's documentary, the relationship between American and Hungarian conservatives has flourished. Advertisement Roberts, of the Heritage Foundation, Meanwhile, Hungarian officials have attended conservative conferences in the United States, where Orbán was sometimes feted as a celebrity guest. A Heritage spokesperson, Marguerite Bowling, said the cooperation agreement with the Danube Institute 'did not involve any financial transactions' and is no longer active. Roberts said, 'I am proud of the strong relationship between Heritage and the Danube Institute.' Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation in 2023 banning state funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at Florida's public universities. Douglas R. Clifford/Associated Press Before Trump returned to office, some Republican governors implemented policies resembling Orbán's. As Orbán did in Hungary, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis installed political allies at the helm of public universities, including the University of Florida system. In 2022, DeSantis signed a law that limited classroom instruction on LGBTQ+ topics that bore similarities to Some of the Trump administration's early moves have resembled Orbán's approach of using muscular state power to achieve conservative ends. Trump, like Orban, has also been criticized for ignoring constraints on presidential power and undermining the rule of law. The Trump administration's use of federal funding as leverage to influence universities is similar to Orbán's approach. Trump's focus on 'wokeness' and transgender issues, as well as his rapprochement with Russia, also echo Orbán's rhetoric. At Mar-a-Lago in December, Advertisement President Trump welcomed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the White House in 2019. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press Mike Damiano can be reached at
