How Hungary’s Orban Is Winning Support by Out-Socializing the Socialists

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This sleepy town is the testing ground of a generous new benefits program created by Viktor Orban’s Fidesz government to win over millennial couples. But it comes with one condition: that they produce children and reverse Hungary’s demographic collapse.

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Orban features most often in Western commentary not just for his stern stance on migration from outside Europe but also as a cautionary tale of the continent’s slide away from liberal democracy into soft authoritarianism through his consolidation of judicial power and control of most of the country’s media into the hands of party allies. {snip} Increasingly, especially since winning more than two-thirds of seats in Parliament in Hungary’s election last April, he appears to be Europe’s most popular political leader.

{snip} Underlying his political success is a raft of policies some call “Orbanomics,” a set of redistributive strategies that shield middle-class Hungarian voters from the pressures of unrestrained capitalism, and which, to American eyes, seem almost socialist in generosity.

CSOK, which launched in 2016, is a prime example. Under the program, families who commit to having three children are given a government grant to buy or build a new house equivalent to up to twice the annual average income. Generous welfare payments make it viable for one parent to leave the workforce and stay at home with the children, while carefully targeted tax allowances mean that a family with three children no longer pays income tax at all. Finally, the expansion of free nurseries around the country allows women to re-enter the workforce without denting their income through childcare costs, in contrast to much of Western Europe.

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In recent years, Orban has established himself on the world stage as a leading voice against immigration, refusing to accept migrants and refugees from the Third World, particularly Islamic nations, at a time when the liberal states of Western Europe struggle to find a solution to the crisis.

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Novak, Hungary’s state secretary for families, is unabashed on this point. “It is about our future. It means if we will last as Hungarians, as Hungary or cease to exist,” adding “many Western states, let’s say in the European Union, also choose [migration] — even if they don’t say so, but they do choose it — as a solution for the problem of the labour market for the problem of the maintaining of the pension system… And in Hungary, we think that that should not be a solution for the demographic challenges.”

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In a September 2018 speech in which Orban outlined his political vision. “Calmly, and with restraint and composure, we must say that the generation of the ’90s is arriving to replace the generation of ’68,” he stated to adoring crowds. “In European politics, it is the turn of the anti-communist generation, which has Christian convictions and commitment to the nation. Thirty years ago we thought that Europe was our future. Today we believe that we are Europe’s future.”

Back in Halásztelek, bouncing Vencel on his lap, Tomas noted his satisfaction with the new Hungarian model: “We supported the present government before this allowance too. This help has just confirmed this view, and we will support this government in the future, with all their faults.”