Hungary to push for ‘family policy’ during EU Council Presidency

Hungary wants family policy featured higher on the EU agenda when it takes over the six-month EU Council presidency in the second half of next year, as plummeting population figures push member states to raise the matter on their respective agendas.

While other parts of the world are expected to see their populations increase, the EU is experiencing population degrowth, a trend which, according to a recent European Commission report, is expected to continue.

The trend can be explained by the EU’s average fertility rate dropping from 2.37 in 1970 to 1.53 in 2021, even though ensuring a stable population requires an average fertility rate of 2.1.

And though numbers strongly diverged between member states, with Spain having the lowest rate (1.19) and the Czech Republic the highest (1.83), no EU member state had reached the rate needed to ensure a stable population in 2021, according to OECD data.

Unsurprisingly, this trend has also led to a decline in the working-age population, while the number of people of retirement age has increased.

With the amount of young people in the 15-29 year-old range having already decreased compared to the overall population between 2011 (18.1%) and 2021 (16.3%), the Commission’s report predicts this trend to continue.

As these trends are expected to shrink the EU’s workforce further, the EU and its member states are either left with increasing migration levels or, as is more expected from right-wing forces like Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, boosting fertility rates by bringing family policy into greater focus.

Hungary’s EU Council presidency

For Hungary, which is to take over the EU Council helm in July next year, demographic challenges and “family policy”, as well as fighting illegal migration, will be at the centre of its EU stint, Hungarian then-justice minister Judit Varga said on social media when she presented her government’s EU Council presidency priorities to the Hungarian Parliament Committee on European Affairs in May.

“When defining them, we considered the fact that the demographic crisis of the European Union has a serious impact on the competitiveness of the Union as a corner point. This provides an opportunity to embrace the demographic and family policy topics during the term of the Presidency at the Council level as well”, she wrote.

Since Hungary will take over the six-month presidency right after the European elections in July of the same year, the EU’s legislative machine will be at low-speed, which gives space for Hungary to put the spotlight on unlikely EU policy topics.

The strategic agenda of the EU Council presidency trio – composed of Spain, Belgium, and Hungary – also emphasises the need to address the demographic challenge the EU is facing in the context of “enhancing the social dimension of Europe” and the “effective implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights”.

The trio programme also hints at a reform of cohesion policy post-2027 to reduce disparities with a particular focus on regions affected by demographic challenges.

Family ministries flourishing all over Europe

However, family matters have recently gained ground in governments across the bloc, as eight of the 27 member states have or will have a ministry whose portfolio implicitly contains family, four of which were created by centre-right and right-wing forces in the last five years.

When right-wing nationalist PiS (ECR) took over Poland’s government in 2015, it reformed the former Labour and Social Policy Ministry into the current Ministry of Family, Labour, and Social Policy.

Poland also adopted its 2040 Demographic Strategy in November to move closer to the fertility rate that would guarantee generation replacement, including by reinforcing the institution of the family and lifting barriers for parents who want children.

As for Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her governing far-right party Fratelli d’Italia (ECR) are also trying to implement structured policies to support the country’s birth rate through the action of the Ministry for Family, Birth and Equal Opportunities.

Some measures have already been included in Italy’s latest budget, like strengthening the universal single allowance and increasing the amount of parental leave from 30% to 80%. “Other measures are in the pipeline”, Meloni recently stated.

In Romania, the centre-right government created the Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities in 2021, while Greece’s newly reelected Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of the right-wing New Democracy party (EPP) set up for the first time a family ministry aiming to support young couples and families.

Looking to the future, Spain’s far-right VOX – which polls indicate could enter government in coalition with right-wing Partido Popular (PP) – proposes the immediate substitution of the Gender Violence Law, “which enshrines the penal asymmetry and inequality between men and women and undermines the basic pillars of the rule of law,” for a Law of Intrafamilial Violence, as well as the abolishment of the Ministry of Equality and creation instead of a ministry of family.

(Max Griera | EURACTIV.com – Additional reporting by Luca Bertuzzi, Catalina Mihai, Federica Pascale, Sandra Uzule, Aleksandra Krzysztoszek)