“Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward. Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking,” alleges Anne Applebaum in the March 31 edition of The Atlantic.
There is not a single fact correctly stated in this diatribe, which purports to diagnose in Hungary’s national conservatism a dire forecast for Trump’s America. The arithmetically challenged Ms. Applebaum might consider repeating 3rd grade and learning arithmetic.
Most of Europe is in or near recession, and Hungary can’t escape the impact of Germany’s industrial downturn. But Hungary’s performance has been at or near the top of its peer group under the Fidesz Party, which came to office in 2010.
The World Bank calculates GDP in terms of purchasing power parity, adjusting the raw data to reflect what people actually can buy with their income. On this basis Hungary’s per capita GDP is higher than Greece or Poland; among its peer group, it lags the Czech Republic and Slovenia.
If we consider the growth of GDP in purchasing-power parity since 2010, when Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban came into office, Hungary’s performance is at the top of the rankings among its peer group.
Applebaum claims that Hungary’s population is shrinking because people are leaving: “Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking.”
The population of almost every European country is shrinking, but Viktor Orban’s Hungary has had the biggest recovery. Along with Czechia, it is one of only two Central European countries with positive net migration:
Hungary also stands out by another key parameter, namely the portion of its adult population that is economically inactive.
It has the lowest inactivity rate of any Western country; only Japan is lower in the OECD. In the UK, for example, about 18% of man aged 25 to 54 years are not employed, compared to just 6% in Hungary. This indicates that jobs are plentiful, and that the population wants to take these jobs.
Fertility remains below replacement in Hungary, but Hungary’s total fertility rate has risen sharply since 2010, while it has fallen in every other European country. As I explained in a January 21 essay in Asia Times, other European countries got a fertility boost from a flood of immigrants, which Hungary refused to accept.
Immigrants tend to have higher fertility than locals in the first generation; as this effect wore off, fertility fell sharply in most of Europe, while Hungary’s fertility continued to rise.
Applebaum has been engaged in a prolonged public tantrum that began when her husband Radek Sikorsky lost his position at the Polish foreign ministry when a conservative government came to power. Everyone she doesn’t like is Hitler. I reviewed her revenge book in 2020:
Anne Applebaum’s list of little Hitlers includes some ex-friends who came to her 1999 New Year’s Eve party in Poland, when her husband Radek Sikorski was a foreign ministry official, as well as former acquaintances like British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The renegade party guests somehow morphed from democracy activists into Nazis, because they suffer from “authoritarian personalities,” Applebaum avers.
Also on her list are “the old Hungarian right, the Spanish right, the French right, the Italian right, and, with differences, the British right and the American right, too.” It is hard to separate Applebaum’s ideological rancor at friends who moved away from the liberal dogmas of 1989 and her personal disappointment over her husband’s career.
She should stick to her day job as the Don Rickles of the neo-conservative right. Applebaum simply cannot add or subtract, or read a chart.
There are many ways in which Hungary could improve its economic management, to be sure, but its accomplishments in demographics and family policy are outstanding, as well as unique. Its economic performance is close to or at the top of its peer group by every standard measure.
David P. Goldman is Deputy Editor (Business) of Asia Times and a research fellow at the Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies in Budapest.
Thank you for setting the record straight! I am quite puzzled by some of the stuff Ms. Applebaum writes.