The meeting is yet another sign of the strengthening ties between U.S. Republicans and Hungarian conservatives.Continue reading
The Hungarian family policy model seems to be lingering in U.S. politics, as one of the candidates has promised to study its merits. As news site Newsmax reported, Joseph P. Kennedy III, the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland, said he would “take a look” at Hungary’s child care policy.
Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, who is on a visit to Washington, told reporters that the U.S. politician’s words are “welcome,” and expressed his hope that he would attend a family conference to be held in Budapest in September.
Photo: Facebook Joseph P. Kennedy III
“It is a good thing to recognize the Hungarian family policy,” Gulyás told U.S. reporters at the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
As the U.S. news site reported, for more than a decade, the government of Viktor Orbán has invested 5% of Hungary’s gross domestic product into its pro-family agenda, which included a pledge to build 70,000 new childcare centers for children whose parents wish to return to work. As Newsmax points out, “Hungary’s Family Protection Action Plan is designed to correct Hungary’s demographic decline, include paid leave of up to three years for mothers and fathers, with a guaranteed similar level upon return to work, and making every young married couple eligible for an interest-free loan of $35,000.”
The news site further quoted Minister Gulyás as saying that signs of success for this policy, including the rising number of marriages and the growing birthrate, are evidence that “‘migration only is not the solution” to address a declining population.
Photo Facebook: Gulyás Gergely
In March of this year, Hungarian President Katalin Novák visited Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is also a Republican nominee for the presidential race, where the two discussed the Hungarian family policy model. In an earlier interview for Hungary Today, the former nominee in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, Kari Lake, also highlighted the Hungarian family support model as a policy that she admires.
