Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that after reaching 4-5% earlier this year, the decline in real wages is set to be pushed under 1% by year-end.
The prime minister detailed the government’s support measures during a press briefing where he noted the revamped home purchase subsidy scheme, saying the government trusted that the CSOK Plusz program would help tens of thousands of families. He also noted a recent agreement between employers and employees under which minimum wages would be raised by 10 and 15%, respectively. The prime minister also said the government guaranteed to preserve the value of pensions, adding that the purchasing power of pensions could even increase in the wake of lower-than-expected inflation. Meanwhile, the prime minister said the European parliamentary elections would be at the centre of next year’s political goals. He said the general view in Hungary was that “the bureaucrats in Brussels live in a bubble”, that “Brussels is blind”, and could not see “real life”. Moreover, it ignored the problems that people struggled with, both in Hungary and in the whole of Europe, he added. Orbán said the goal of the 2024 EP election therefore was to “open the eyes of Brussels, make them see reality and make European leaders capable of correcting the mistakes that they made in 2023”. Hungary, he added, would try to achieve a significant political turnaround in the EP elections. On the subject of teachers’ pay, Orbán announced the launch of a three-year scheme to increase the salaries of school and kindergarten teachers which would see their average salary rise by 32.2% from January. He said the preconditions for the programme were “about to be met”, adding, however, that Hungary must first receive a letter from Brussels “confirming they will cover a certain part of the pay hike.” He said the government had a plan in place for steps to be taken once the letter arrived. He said the pay rise would be the first component in a three-year plan, to be followed by “smaller but still significant” hikes in 2025 and 2026, after which teachers’ average pay would reach 800,000 forints (EUR 2,080). Orbán said teachers’ salaries could vary based on their performance and geographical location.