Hungary is now offering to give €30,600 to married couples who have three or more children, in a bid to boost the country’s population.
This is how it works; A married couple will receive a €30,600 loan from the government upon getting married. The loan then has to be repaid until the couple has three children. At this point, the debt is completely forgiven.
Summit.news reports: “In this month alone, approximately 2,400 Hungarian families have already signed up and applied for the loan which is paid out in monthly installments,” reports Voice of Europe. “In the case that the couple has a child within five years, the loan’s interest and scheduled repayments are both suspended for a period of three years.”
In an effort to prevent the loan being exploited by work-shy couples, one person in the married couple will need to have paid 180 days worth of tax contributions to the state. The marriage must also be the first for at least one of the couple.
Couples who do not have a child within five years or who get divorced within that same time period will be forced to repay the loan in full within four months.
The loans are part of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s efforts to reverse the demographic decline of Hungary’s native population while maintaining a strict immigration policy.
“We do not want to mix our Christianity-based culture, values, attitude to life with other cultures,” Orbán previously stated.
Partly thanks to Orbán’s pro-family policies, abortions in Hungary dropped from 40,449 to 28,500 from 2010 to 2017, divorces fell from 23,873 in 2010 to 18,600, and marriages increase by a massive 42 percent.
“Europe is at a crossroads. Western Europe seeks to address the problem of demography with simple solutions which only offer short-term success, but convey catastrophic consequences in the long run,” a Fidesz party spokesperson said.