Viktor Orban offers young voters tax break in bid to boost popularity and stop them leaving

Viktor Orban, a self-styled "Christian Conservative"  has been criticised for his illiberal policies.

Credit: Reuters

Viktor Orban has announced that Hungarians under the age of 25 will not have to pay income tax in a bid to boost his flagging popularity among young voters.

The strongman leader said on Friday the plan would come into effect by January next year, which is just before parliamentary elections. 

Mr Orban, who has been in power for more than a decade, hopes to win a fourth consecutive term as prime minister. 

The youth vote is his worst demographic and one where the opposition leads his Fidesz party, according to polls last year.

Most polls in the past month showed Fidesz now trailing the opposition, which is uniting for the first time to try to unseat the authoritarian prime minister

Mr Orban, who has drawn criticism from his EU allies over his crackdown on civil liberties and gay rights, told Hungarian radio the move would accelerate the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

He said that the full personal income tax break could cost the budget about 130 billion forints (£321 million) a year.

The exemption may apply up to the average wage but that has not yet been decided. Income tax is levied at a flat rate of 15 percent in Hungary.

Poland and Croatia have approved similar exemptions in the last two years in an effort to discourage young people from emigrating elsewhere in the EU. 

“This move is not surprising when polls indicate the Fidesz party’s low support among young voters,” Andras Biro-Nagy, director of the Budapest-based Policy Solutions research  institute, told Bloomberg.

Fidesz polled at 22 percent among those aged 18-30 compared with 40 percent for the opposition, according to a Median poll from November. It led by 44 percent to 33 percent among those older than 30.   Mr Orban told state radio that he hoped to get a “clear answer” from the Hungarian authorities about the Chinese Covid vaccine in a few days. 

He put pressure on the authorities to act fast in assessing the vaccine. He claimed that if the Chinese vaccine was approved for use, Hungary could return to normal before the summer.