BUDAPEST -- Before Christmas, the capital's Ferihegy airport is packed with Hungarians arriving home for the holidays. Families eagerly wait for their loved ones in the brightly lit arrivals hall, with a modest cafe, a tobacco shop, and colorful billboards advertising "Family-friendly Hungary" in multiple languages.
Outside the terminal, it is pouring rain, but the weather doesn't dampen the mood of 30-year-old Aron and 34-year-old Masa, who are taking the bus to downtown Budapest. They both moved to Germany for their studies and ended up staying there. After striking up a conversation, they are soon bonding over their love of long holidays and memories of Lake Balaton, before moving on to the big question: Would you ever move back home?
"If it wasn't for the financial aspect," Aron said, "I might consider it." Aron grew up in Budapest but has family in Germany, where he now works in IT. His brother -- who lives in Hungary and works in IT at a multinational company -- earns one-third of his salary, he says. Masa, who has been in Germany for over a decade working as an engineer, says she would consider living somewhere else in Europe before Hungary -- also for financial reasons.
Budapest's Ferihegy airport
In Hungary, Aron's and Masa's stories are incredibly familiar. According to recent figures, over 700,000 Hungarians live outside the country -- over 7 percent of the population. (This doesn't include the around 2 million ethnic Hungarians who live in neighboring states, such as Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia.) This recent exodus has contributed to the country's demographic crisis, with the population in decline since the 1980s. According to some projections, by 2050, Hungary could have 1 million fewer people.
Wary of the dwindling population and the economic consequences of this brain drain, the government has launched a program -- reportedly costing over 1.2 billion forints ($3.5 million) -- to bring Hungarians home. Under the new initiative, the government has opened 27 new administrative offices around the country, launched a sleek website and hot line, and targeted Hungarians with YouTube ads. But despite the government's efforts, the program has been heavily criticized, with many Hungarians living abroad saying they still have little interest in moving home.
Economic Woes
Among Hungary's total population of 9.6 million people, the unemployment rate stands at around 4 percent. Yet for Hungarians under the age of 24, that figure is around 11 percent. And according to a recent survey by Hungary's OTP Fay Andras Foundation, an NGO focused on financial education, only 43 percent of people between the ages of 16 and 24 can imagine a future in Hungary over the next 10 years.
For those young Hungarians in work, the pay isn't great, either. According to Eurostat, the EU's official statistics body, Hungarian wages remain below the EU average, while inflation has hovered around 9.6 percent, well above the bloc's average of 3.6 percent.
The sluggish economy and anemic remuneration is one reason why so many young Hungarians are seeking work abroad, with Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom being the most popular destinations. According to estimates in local media, up to 500,000 Hungarians work in these three countries, most of them in the health-care, engineering, IT, hospitality, and construction sectors. Between February and December 2023, the number of Hungarians finding work abroad grew faster than the number of Hungarians finding work at home.
Speaking to RFE/RL, a number of young Hungarians point to the relatively low wages and lack of decent employment opportunities at home, especially in the creative industry. Alexandra Gara, a Hungarian living and working in London, says that the Hungarian government would need to raise the minimum wage and decrease taxes for her to consider moving home.
For Gara, though, and for many other young Hungarians, the economy is only part of the problem. They are distraught and disappointed with the political direction of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Hungary, who has served as the country's leader since 2010. His government has been accused by critics -- including the EU -- of backsliding on democracy and the rule of law, threatening the independence of the judiciary, and pursuing policies that are hostile to migrants and the LGBT community.
To return home, Gara says, she would like the government to ban homophobic and transphobic political parties and invest in health care and schools. "Politicians," she said, "shouldn't interfere with basic human rights," pointing to the difficulties women now have getting abortions after the government tightened regulations.
A demonstrator holds a placard showing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban holding a scarf in rainbow colours, in front of the parliament building in Budapest in June 2021 during a demonstration against the government's draft bill seeking to ban the "promotion" of homosexuality and sex changes.
Under the rule of Orban's nationalist Fidesz party, the rights of LGBT people, migrants, and refugees have been curtailed. The ruling party has amended the constitution, restricting adoption for LGBT families and banning legal gender changes.
"For me, a bisexual man, it's incredibly hard to accept that Hungarians keep on voting for a government that would like to eradicate LGBT people," said a 27-year-old Hungarian who works in the creative industry and wishes to remain anonymous because his family isn't aware of his sexual orientation.
After studying in the United Kingdom, he moved home with his girlfriend for community and financial reasons, but they are now actively contemplating leaving for Vienna or France. "If we had a child, and they were gay, bisexual, transgender, or nonbinary, or maybe had some learning difficulties, we wouldn't want them to feel like they are not part of a community," he said.
Others Hungarian emigrants have different concerns. A 28-year-old woman from Budapest, who is now working in the field of sustainability in Western Europe, said the government doesn't "take the threat of climate change seriously enough."
It "makes me feel like they are letting young people down," she said, asking to remain anonymous out of fear her comments could damage her career. As someone working in the environmental field, she is disappointed that the government has polarized the climate-change debate and, among other things, has maintained its ban on wind turbines. "I think there's nothing more important for young people than securing their future, not ruining it," she said.
This exodus of young people comes with consequences.
"Whether Hungary is a good country or not doesn't depend on whether 9 million or 11 million people live in it," Balazs Kapitany, a chief researcher at the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH), told RFE/RL's Hungarian Service.
Rather, it's Hungary's lack of young people, Kapitany says, that is contributing to the growing labor shortage, holding back innovation, slowing the economy, and affecting people's quality of life. A significant proportion of the young people who choose to leave are highly educated and work in professional fields. According to data from KSH, up to 85 percent of all Hungarian emigrants are below the age of 40, and 33 percent have at least a degree, compared to 18 percent of the population as a whole.
'Welcome Home' -- But Then What?
In one of the new dedicated offices in central Budapest, visitors can book consultations with program representatives to facilitate their return home, although they still have to visit separate offices to register for health care or translate official documents.
Visitors to the government's newly launched website https://hazavaro.gov.hu/ -- which is in Hungarian and English -- are greeted with a photograph of an idyllic scene from the Hungarian countryside. "Welcome home!" the introductory text reads, with users then pointed toward primers on subjects ranging from terminating their rental agreements in their countries of residence to requesting a new tax identification number.
Over the last decade, the Fidesz government has been trying to implement policies to bring Hungarians back home and to reverse Hungary's demographic trend, for example by providing financial and other forms of assistance for young people starting a family. Early efforts, however, were not hugely successful. In 2016, a 100 million-forint program only helped 105 Hungarians return home.
Opposition parties and Hungarians living abroad have questioned the effectiveness of the government's new program. "What's the point of opening [these] offices in Hungary, if the people you are welcoming home are not in the country?" Agnes Vadas, a parliamentary deputy from the socialist Democratic Coalition party, asked the government as details of the program emerged.
In response, Miklos Panyi, a minister in the prime minister's office, said the 27 welcome centers will help in the management of "complex life situations arising from long-term stays abroad with the help of qualified and experienced government officials." RFE/RL contacted representatives of the program, but all requests went unanswered.
"I've read that they help with [the bureaucracy], but I have no idea what that could entail," 28-year-old Kitti Petelen said. After studying in Berlin, Petelen and her Hungarian husband moved from Germany back to Hungary during the coronavirus pandemic. She is currently finishing her master's thesis while at home with their 8-month-old son and dog.
In a telephone conversation with RFE/RL, Petelen says that they have faced some bureaucratic difficulties since they have returned home, for example in getting a maternity loan, but these are not insurmountable obstacles. But Petelen says she is ready to leave Hungary again, not because of the bureaucratic hassles, but because of the country's shift toward illiberalism. "I don't want to be like a frog slowly cooking in lukewarm water," she said.
While Hungary's opposition parties are divided on many issues, they mostly agree that Fidesz's new program to bring Hungarians home is a waste of time.
"Politically, this is a joke. There's no substantive help," said Mate Kanasz-Nagy, a member of the National Assembly from the opposition Hungarian Green Party (LMP). According to Kanasz-Nagy, who was brought up in Budapest and has a degree in sociology, creating jobs would be a much better option to lure Hungarians home. Better that, he said, than "a website that features recommendations, like 'you should quit your foreign phone provider.'"
Even some of Fidesz's allies are skeptical. "Our vision for the future differs from Fidesz's in its foundations," Csaba Binder, the leader of the right-wing Our Homeland party's youth wing, wrote in an e-mail to RFE/RL. "We want the generation growing up to imagine their future in Hungary, for them to see living and having children here as a possibility," he said. Economic planning, he adds, should be more Hungarian-focused, fueled by young Hungarians who have access to high-quality education and affordable accommodation, and for whom starting a family "doesn't mean impoverishment."
The conservative Jobbik party has proposed the building of affordable housing for young people. Cheaper rents and subsidized property purchases would entice young people to move home, says Daniel Z. Karpat, a member of the National Assembly and vice-president of the party. "We could fight the national depression that is prevalent in the entirety of Central and Eastern Europe, but mostly Hungary," Karpat said, "if we provide hope for the future."
Katalin Cseh (right) of the Momentum opposition party helps to place a sticker saying: "Every sixth Hungarian child is born abroad. Let's not hand over our future," over a Hungarian government poster targeting then-European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Hungarian-American financier George Soros in Budapest in February 2019.
"Many leave Hungary because of the current government," said 35-year-old Katalin Cseh, a member of the European Parliament from the centrist Momentum party. A doctor by trade, Cseh founded the political party after studying in the Netherlands.
The opposition's most important job, Cseh says, is to remove Fidesz from power. Momentum, Jobbik, and LMP joined forces for the 2022 parliamentary elections, but the opposition grouping didn't manage to gain the required one-third of the seats in parliament, meaning that the Fidesz government faces fewer obstacles in implementing its agenda.
"Someone who makes the decision to move away from their home, family, and friends [because of the economic situation] will not come home just because the bureaucratic aspects of moving home became easier," Cseh said.