Hungarian family politics a campaign topic in Italy

Matteo Salvini's words praising Hungarian family policy were not tolerated by the Italian left.

The Italian left did not let Matteo Salvini’s praise of Hungarian family politics go without comment: the right-wing leader’s statement lauding the Hungarian government’s support for families and young people caused immediate uproar amongst his political opponents.

Thanks to the Italian Lega Nord, in addition to illegal immigration, family policy was a hot election topic – and the Hungarian government’s increasingly well-known policies became the center of attention.

Matteo Salvini, leader of Italian conservative party Lega Nord, praised Hungarian family and youth policies on the Radio 24 channel. The politician highlighted that Hungary managed to demonstrate the best results in Europe in terms of increasing fertility. He also emphasized that proven economic tools, family support, and tax cuts motivate childbearing – thus making the Hungarian example one to follow.

After Salvini’s declaration, more and more Italians want to know what exactly is behind the successful Hungarian recipe – that the Italian left commonly characterizes as hell. The right-wing political daily, La Veritá, summarized the heated debates that broke out along with the policies related to family planning that the Hungarian government has implemented.

Tax cuts, loan discounts, maternity benefits. That is Orbán’s pro-life “hell”.

– wrote the author, opening his article with this rather controversial statement. The Democratic Party and the left-wing press were shocked to hear Salvini’s statement recommending the family politics implemented in Hungary in response to the decreasing population afflicting Italy. The article details just how the Hungarian government spends 6.2 percent of its GDP on families and on parents, children, grandparents, and the purchase of apartments and cars.

Though Italy currently does not do anything to support families, the depopulation is inflicting more and more damage. Yet somehow the left-wing still has the courage to criticize the Hungarians who have achieved remarkable results in recent years in order to motivate child rearing. “While the daily La Stampa characterizes Hungarians as homophobic and misogynistic, they fail to recognize that the loan structures and tax cuts that Viktor Orbán has introduced could be beneficial for Italians,” wrote the La Veritá article author, Francesco Bonazzi.

The militant representatives of the left-wing Democratic Party were furious at Salvini’s statement. Deborah Serrachiani responded in horror:

The Orbán-model that Salvini loves so much, does not serve families and women, but rather takes them back decades to the dark ages taking away women's rights – which Salvini probably does not value anyways.

Democratic Party representative Lia Quartapelle also did not tolerate Salvini’s words of praise for the Hungarian government. As he said, Salvini’s plan is to make Italy similar to Hungary; “if they really want to help families, they should follow other European models, like the French ones,” suggested Quartapelle.

Last May, the president of the Italian statistical office Giancarlo Blangiardo, pointed out the worrying trend of population indicators dramatically deteriorating year by year. In the years before the pandemic, Italian families were not particularly motivated to establish families and the current economic difficulties pose an even more challenging obstacle to doing so. The lowest record of all time was broken this past year with only 399 thousand children born in Italy.

According to predictions, by 2070, the population of Italy will shrink from 59 million to 47 million. A shrinking population comes with serious economic decline since the productive capacity of a country is closely connected to population indicators. “In the absence of labor, one can only expect

economic recession,” said Ignazio Visco, Governor of the Bank of Italy, in connection with the phenomenon.

Cover photo: Matteo Salvini and Viktor Orbán. Right-wing alliance (Photo: Prime Minister's Press Office/Zoltán Fischer)