“Family formation and the future” – Danube Institute: Family Formation and the Future conference 2025
“Family formation and the future”
Budapest, April 2, 2025
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
Life often presents us with two equal paths, yet we instinctively choose one over the other.
I experience this every time I visit Buda Castle from the underground parking lot. There, I have a choice: take the elevator to either the first floor or the second. I always choose the second floor. Rationally, it makes no sense—it’s an extra stop that doesn’t bring me any closer to my destination. And yet, I always take this route.
The reason is simple: the view. I choose this path because I feel connected to this place.
There’s nothing unusual about such moments—we all experience them. This sense of longing is deeply human. If we look closer, we realize that our attachments give us direction, shaping both our personal lives and our communities.
After all, belonging means that places, people, and experiences hold meaning for us.
Dear Friends,
It might seem a bit unusual at first that I’m sharing all this with you here and now. But I do so to illustrate the main motivation behind the Hungarian government’s policies.
The Hungarian Government has been in power for 15 years. The Hungarian Prime Minister has been in politics for nearly 40. The political right in Hungary has fought many great battles.
But when we ask what all these battles are really for—what their deeper meaning or ultimate goal is—we must address fundamental questions about the human condition.
As the examples I mentioned shows, we experience space and time very differently from how science describes them.
Science tells us that space and time are neutral, the same everywhere. But for us, they are full of meaning—special places, moments, and people. Our home, the town we grew up in—these are not just locations, but places that matter to us. Celebrations mark special moments. Our family members are not just people; they hold a unique place in our lives.
It’s this meaning that gives our lives’ purpose.
Meaning equals responsibility. Meaning isn’t just a product of rational thought—it runs deeper and gives direction for our rational behavior.
Let me try to explain what I mean. Here we are in the Buda Castle District—a truly stunning setting. The Matthias Church, the Fisherman’s Bastion, the breathtaking view. No matter which country we come from, we can all agree this is a beautiful place.
But for us, Hungarians, the Buda Castle means much more than that. When we walk through this part of the city, it holds a significance that no modern brick wall, no matter how expertly designed, could ever replace.
Under these medieval walls, some of the greatest battles in Hungarian history were fought. Our ancestors lived and died here. There was love, betrayal, murder, acts of bravery, tragedy—and even more moments of glory and joy.
All of this meaning brings with it a sense of duty, purpose, and responsibility for us, Hungarians. It reminds us that we must carry the story forward. We have to fight our own battles—and we have to pass this legacy on to our children.
Meaning equals responsibility. And that gives us our place in the world.
Psychologists claim this sense of meaning and purpose often emerge in moments of optimal stress—times when we feel both stable and challenged. These moments push us to grow, discover new abilities, and make important choices. They help us distinguish right from wrong and shape our sense of purpose.
From all these perspectives, one thing stands out: meaning and purpose are deeply connected to our relationships with the world and others. Meaning and purpose don’t come from isolation. They can’t exist if we don’t value our surroundings—our hometown, family, community, or nation.
It’s these connections that drive us toward meaningful experiences. They lead us into challenges where, under just the right amount of pressure, we grow and become more than we were before.
To sum it up: We find meaning and purpose when we take responsibility for others. This responsibility leads us into situations that help us grow. It also allows us to develop successful, future-focused strategies. Ultimately, meaning and purpose are deeply tied to relationships—we must nurture our connections with the world and those around us to truly experience them.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
With this in mind, let me turn to the political side of my remarks.
The world is undergoing major changes, including in geopolitics. Many describe this as the decline—or ongoing collapse—of the liberal, universalist world order, making way for a new, multipolar sovereigntist one.
But these changes aren’t just geopolitical. They also involve shifts in ideas. New perspectives are emerging from outside the Western world, and even within the West, ideas are changing rapidly.
We’ve begun to rediscover one of the very first commandments in Scripture: “Be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.” What the Bible teaches us is also true in geopolitics. Liberal values alone are not enough. The size of a community matters—its market strength and military power are crucial. These are truths that haven’t changed over time.
Of course, we can say that God loves and blesses small nations. That’s true. But even a small nation needs a stable population. It needs a next generation. A small nation must be able to renew itself too. In the past few decades, the Western world has forgotten these basic truths.
For the past 80 years, Western civilization has been built on the assumption that liberal values are universal—that they should apply everywhere, in the same way, for everyone. But as a result, liberalism has drained meaning and purpose from our lives. Just an example. I once read a post-modern parenting blog that said bedtime is a colonial construct. I stopped reading it immediately.
Liberal values have weakened our sense of right and wrong, our expectations for the future, and our ability to navigate the world. The real crisis isn’t just that liberal values have failed globally—they have failed at home. Instead of strengthening Western societies, they have contributed to their decline.
Of course, for some, none of this is new. There were people who saw this coming and warned us about the dangers. The famous German constitutional scholar, Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, pointed this out as early as the 1970s. He showed that a state built purely on liberal principles cannot reproduce the very values it is based on.
Values like human dignity, the freedom derived from it, equality before the law, — all of these are the result of an organic historical development. Their roots lie in the moral foundations of European Judeo-Christian civilization.
If we throw away this historical grounding, liberal values can no longer function as they were meant to. In the end, a state based solely on liberal ideas becomes self-defeating. Its days are numbered.
We see the consequences everywhere. In western countries, families and nations are under strain. Liberals insisted that attachment to home and country wasn’t necessary for a successful society—this was the logic behind their migration policies, which led to mass illegal immigration. But reality proved otherwise. Our home and homeland matter. If the shared meaning that holds a society together disappears, the society itself collapses.
The effects are clear: rising crime and security threats in many Western countries.
The same pattern applies to the family. Liberals argued that a family can be basically anything. It’s not made up of a father, a mother, and children. They even had a slogan for this in Hungary, which said “family is family,”. Which is a clear tautology—it suggests that no one really knows what “family” means.
But family isn’t an abstract concept—it’s about deep, personal attachments. It teaches us cooperation, sacrifice, and how to live together. Unlike the liberal idea of the state as a social contract, the family comes first—it is the foundation of society itself.
Strong families build strong nations. Nations are bound by shared history, geography, and traditions, and our attachment to them often starts at home. When liberals weakened family values, they weakened their own nations.
And now, the West is paying the price. Birth rates are plummeting. Last year, births in the EU dropped by almost 6%—the biggest decline in 60 years.
The lesson is clear: societies cannot thrive without strong families, without strong national identities. These values bring meaning to our lives. The West must rediscover these foundations if it hopes to remain strong in the future.
Western countries have only one path forward: a return to the traditional values that liberals abandoned. We must strengthen families, rebuild local communities, revive patriotism, and restore national identity. Only with these foundations can we secure our future!
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
Hungary recognized early on the dangers of relying only on liberal values.
This is why the Hungarian Parliament adopted a new constitution in the spring of 2011. The Fundamental Law has been in force since 2012, and it brought a real shift in thinking—one that could serve as an example for the entire Western world.
What makes the Hungarian constitution truly unique is that it brings the values of our historical constitution into the modern constitutional framework. In doing so, it turns the story of Hungarian legal development—and in a broader sense, the history of Hungary itself—into a shared reference point for our community. Therefore, it brings back meaning and purpose into how the Hungarian state operates.
The Fundamental Law also reminds us of something essential: that freedom doesn’t work without community. As Roger Scruton put it, we need a bond between past generations, those living today, and the ones who will come after us.
This is why, in Hungary, human dignity, the sanctity of family, and the nation’s cause can be protected as constitutional values—all, at the same time. And these values have become the foundation of our most important policy decisions ever since.
For nearly 15 years, we have worked hard to strengthen families, support local communities, and restore national pride.
Yesterday fellow cabinet, Minister Balázs Hankó, spoke about the specific policies we have implemented. So instead of repeating his points, I will briefly summarize what we’ve done and the results we’ve achieved:
Building a Family-Friendly Nation
Hungary has structured its entire state, politics, and economy around families. We believe that the family is the foundation of society and must be supported at all levels. Our goal is simple: help those who want to start a family and raise children. Hungarian women and mothers are our partners in this effort. That’s why Hungary is unique—a woman here may never have to pay personal income tax ever again. Young people under 25 pay no income tax. Mothers under 30 with one child, and mothers over 30 with two children, also receive tax exemptions.
And we didn’t stop there. In Hungary, if a woman decides to have a child, she gets three years of maternity leave. And during this time, she’s entitled to higher support than what she earned in her job before.
I won’t list every policy we’ve introduced, but these examples show our core principle: supporting families is the key to a strong society.
These policies have led to real, measurable success:
- Since our government came to power, the number of marriages has gone up by a third.
- Since 2010, the number of divorces involving children has dropped by 80 percent.
- In the same period, the number of abortions has been cut in half. And this happened without any legal restrictions.
- Hungary now has the 3rd highest fertility rate in the EU (1.55), behind only France and Bulgaria. In 2010, we had the lowest (1.25).
- Without our family policies, 212,000 fewer children would have been born.
- We have doubled the number of daycare centers, making childcare accessible in 3.5 times more towns than before.
- Employment among mothers with young children has risen from 66% in 2010 to 80% today.
Keeping Rural Communities Strong
We are also committed to preserving rural life and making it an attractive option for families. We have:
- Invested heavily in infrastructure and renovations in small towns.
- Ensured rural communities have access to quality services, so people don’t feel forced to move to cities.
- Promoted Hungary’s beautiful countryside, strengthening the bond between people and their homeland. For our American guests: Rural Hungary is almost like the Midwest, but with better wine and fewer tornadoes.
Defending Our Nation
Hungary is also known for its strong stance on illegal immigration. We see this as an essential part of protecting our largest natural community—the nation.
- We have spent $2 billion on border protection. And we built the fence ourselves. No supply chain issues. No congressional hearings. Just hammers and resolve.
- Brussels gave us only €200 million in support but now fines us €1 million per day for defending our borders. At some point, I start to wonder if they are just jealous of our border fence. It’s something in the EU that actually works.
- But we stand firm and will reclaim every cent that has been unfairly taken from us.
- But even with the fine, it still makes more sense to pay than to let in all those illegal immigrants Brussels wants to force on us.
As I wrap up, I want to reaffirm Hungary’s commitment to supporting families, strengthening communities, and defending national identity. Over the past 15 years, we’ve made families the foundation of our society and economy, believing that strong families can lead to strong nations. We will continue to focus on this in the future.
Today, families face a number of challenges, including demographic decline, cultural shifts, and economic pressures. I can’t think of a better place than Hungary, and the platform provided by the Danube Institute, to discuss these issues.
And while we’re at it, let me say that we’re also ready to offer a safe haven (hévön) here in Hungary to Western families fleeing the liberal thought police. We don’t do lockdowns here.
I hope our experiences can provide inspiration and practical solutions for your countries as well. Take this opportunity to share ideas, engage in open discussions, and collaborate on strengthening families worldwide. And please, feel free to speak openly. Hungary is a family-friendly country—we like to think of it as one big extended family. And in a family, the greatest virtue is honesty.
Thank you for your attention, and I wish you all a productive and enjoyable conference!
