Viktor Orban and Giorgia Meloni want their citizens to have more children
Like much of the rich world, Europe is in the midst of acountry is producing anywhere near enough babies to sustain its population. This vaguely worries liberals, who wonder about the sustainability of the welfare state as retirees start outnumbering workers. But conservative leaders like Mr Orban and Ms Meloni paint the struggle for babies as existential. To them, families mark the bedrock of an orderly state—as long as they are straight and of local ethnic stock, that is.
Mr Orban and Ms Meloni were at their naggiest at a “Demographic Summit” organised by the Hungarian authorities between September 14th and 16th. Held every two years since 2015 in Budapest, the forum provides a safe space for conservatives tired of liberal takes on everything from those migrants torights. Mr Orban held court in front of delegates from dozens of countries, many of them from central Europe and the Balkans.
Demography is the perfect issue for Mr Orban in particular to burnish his reputation beyond Hungary. In Europe he is a bête noire, thanks to his pro-Russia stance and perennial fights with theover his hobbling of the judiciary. But to those who think Europe is facing a demographic abyss, none of this matters. Pesky questions around judicial arrangements, or even issues Brussels types bang on about like climate change, are small fry compared with the baby drought.
Hungary thinks it is showing the way. When Mr Orban regained power in 2010, its fertility rate was just 1.26 children per woman, the lowest in the. Now it is in the middle of the European pack, at 1.52—still well below the 2.1 replacement number, but a marked improvement. Conservatives credit family-friendly policies. Women with four kids or more are exempt from income tax for life, a measure that might be extended to those with just three.
As a mainstream media type, Charlemagne stands as immediately suspect in the eyes of the Budapest crowd . But as far as he can tell, the progressive elite’s plot is even more dastardly than the Hungarian-Italian axis suspects. Liberals do not, in fact, see immigration as a straight-up replacement for baby-making. Their approach is, if anything, worse: it is to do nothing.
Belgique Dernières Nouvelles, Belgique Actualités
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