Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the government has made it its priority to “break with the practice of low minimum wages, to offer jobs rather than benefits, ensure that all those able to work have jobs and that labor is financially rewarding.”
The prime minister said that in the past 12 years the minimum wage in Hungary has been increased by 172 percent. Reducing taxes on employers “will create more jobs and higher wages”, he said. The “focal point” of a work-based economy is a “tax system which can improve competitiveness”, Orbán said. “Tax cuts have made it possible to negotiate higher wages each year,” he added.
László Palkovics, Minister of Innovation and Technology, said the Hungarian economy had performed well even during the coronavirus epidemic, adding that “the government’s measures are working” and the national economy was “again among the best performers” of Europe. He also noted that Hungary’s unemployment rate was among the lowest in the EU.
Meanwhile, Imre Palkovics, the head of trade union federation MOSZ, welcomed the negotiations leading to the agreement as a “model predictable both for employees and employers”. He added that 300,000 Hungarians currently earned the basic minimum wage and 800,000 received the minimum for skilled labor.
Photo credit: MTI