Hungary’s Orbán Announces Fresh Pro-Family Financial Incentives and Tax Breaks for Parents

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has once again put pro-family policies at the heart of his government’s agenda, announcing new tax breaks and other financial incentives to help young couples afford to raise the next generation of children.

In a speech in the Országház to mark the opening of the spring session of the parliament, Prime Minister Orbán announced his government would double the tax deductions for children from their current rate and plans to introduce full income tax exemptions for mothers of two or more children starting in October of this year.

The Hungarian government will also raise the age limit for the “childbirth incentive loan” to 35 years old, Orbán said. Under the plan, prospective parents can apply for an interest-free loan of up to 11 million forints ($28,800/£22,800) from the government.

If a child is born within the first five years after the loan, repayment is suspended for three years, and three more years and a repayment reduction of 30 per cent if a second child is born. If a third child is born, the government waives the entire amount unpaid by the couple.

Mr Orbán said that the measures he announced on Tuesday were “unprecedented” in Europe and claimed that they represented the largest tax reduction programme throughout the continent. He said that his government would be able to do this while still being on course to reduce the budget deficit and national debt.

The birth rate in Hungary fell to a record low of 1.23 in 2011, the year after Orbán came back into power in Budapest. With his pro-family agenda, the birth rate continually rose to a high of 1.61 in 2021. However, following the Chinese coronavirus and the economic crisis in Europe exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, the rate fell back to 1.51 in 2023.

While still up over a quarter from when he took office, Orbán is seeking to increase the birth rate to above 2.1 per cent by the end of the decade so that the country would once again be above the replacement rate.

Although globalists have argued that Europe must rely on mass migration to mitigate plunging birth rates, conservative countries such as Hungary and Poland have sought to invest in their own people rather than relying on foreigners.

However, in his speech before the parliament on Tuesday, Orbán pointed to the election of his longtime ally, President Donald Trump, as a “breakthrough in world politics” and that the “anti-migration, pro-family and patriotic forces are now in the majority in the Western world.”

“We Hungarians started this change back in 2010 and have persevered ever since,” he said.

Yet, the Hungarian leader said that attaining a majority was not enough, vowing to follow the lead of Trump in rooting out leftist state-funded NGOs, vowing to cut off the “money taps of the Soros Network”, which he accused of pushing open borders and anti-family agendas in Hungary.

To combat this, Orbán said that a special commissioner would be appointed to examine foreign-funded influence operations within the country.

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