Hungarian family politics a campaign topic in Italy

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

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)