Family Time: Re-Building The Population Pyramid
Weekly briefings on the life of The New European Capital of Conservatism.
Events This Week
The DI's annual Family Conference is like a trade show for fundamental human forms of belonging. Do you want one? How about a new one? Could they be better dressed? Whether you hire or purchase, family is the greatest investment you'll ever make, and the Villa is where it all comes together. Two day event - 9AM Tuesday till 5PM Wednesday. Here are some of the bigger wigs appearing this year. Edward Davies - Director of Research at the Center for Social Justice Emma Trimble (née Webb) - top notch British commentator Laoise de Brún BL - CEO & Founder of The Countess Foundation, Ireland Delano Squires Ashley Frawley - loquacious and vivacious American from MCC Brussels Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović - Former President of Croatia Gladden Pappin - Killary theorist, and President of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs Tony Abbott - Former Prime Minister of Australia and wombat folk-psychologist Eduard Habsburg - former Ambassador to the Holy See, and 96th in line to the Holy Crown. Closing remarks by Mr István Kiss - a put-upon local father of three.
North Macedonia is easily the least troublesome bit of the Balkans. Unlike the rest, it calmly melted away from the former Yugoslavia, like an Irishman at a party, without so much as a Slovenia-style weekend war. Yet despite being wildly calm and having an attractive capital the EasyJet set would love, this fragment remains slightly beyond the bounds of the EU, languishing in landlocked obscurity. Obscurity no more: tonight, MCC is hosting a special event on North Macedonia, focusing on the European integration of the Western Balkans. It features Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski. 6:45PM, at MCC.
Of course, if you hate families, perhaps you'd prefer a morning seminar at Ludovika Univsersity of Public Service, on Maps Of Power. Canvassing geo-politics in yer typical 'time of upheaval'. Features John Hutchinson from the London School of Economics on How Wars Shape Nations: Memory, Identity, and Power, the all-powerful Márton Ugrósdy, Gladden Pappin as standard, and our very own wunderkind Calum 'TM' Nicholson. 9AM - 2PM, Saint Ladislaus Chapel, Ludovika.
Around Town
Perspectives and people from the week
Fans of Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo have had a fantastic week. Opponents of Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo have had a shocker. Last week, 90s goofball comedy pinup Rob Schneider was in town, soaking up the rabidly right wing ambience of the Gathering of the Patriots, and putting on a talk at MCC. "The best way to fight tyranny is to laugh at it," he told his audience. A sentiment that didn't take The 2nd Royal Satirists' Battalion very far on D-Day. Here he is with his number one fan and a couple of rubberneckers.
Spring is sputtering into life. The days are widening, the layers are coming off, the central heating is in that awkward fiddling-phase. But it doesn't officially bloom until the cherry blossoms do. Next week, the ELTE Botanical Garden hosts the annual Sakura Celebration in their cherry orchard, inspired by the Japanese custom of Ohanami – the practice of viewing and appreciating the transient beauty of flowers. Book in advance to avoid disappointment.
Sir Richard Bishop (knighthood self-bestowed) is one of the backbones of experimental Americana. Maker of 19 albums since 1998, he's collaborated with the likes of Devendra Barnhart, Animal Collective, and Bill Callahan. On Thursday, he hits Lumen, 8PM. Come for Elektronika Demonika, stay for While My Guitar Violently Bleeds.
Ferenc Puskás was the Maradona of Hungary. A footballer who became bigger than the game. Best known in England for thumping them 6-3 at Wembley, then 7-1 on the return leg, Puskás was the platinum leader of Hungary's 1950s golden generation - who revolutionised play with their fast, sweeping style. After 1956, he defected, and banged in four for Real Madrid in the 7-3 European cup final often heralded as 'the greatest club game of all time'. FIFA's 'Goal of the Year' trophy is named after him. Today, he donates his name to a football academy, a football club that grew out of it - and to his own personal museum. We were reminded of the latter by our Events manager, the indefatigable Katerina Nagy, who, it turns out, is immortalised in its foundation stone as its founding co-ordinator. It's inside the Puskás Aréna complex, housed in the only surviving part of the old Népstadion. The Puskásmúzeum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10AM–6PM. The address is: Istvánmezei út 3-5, XIV district.
The election temperature gets ever-hotter. This week, the BBC reported on a documentary it said was made by 'independent film makers: The Price of the Vote: "Local mayors exercise an iron grip over daily lives," reporter Nick Thorpe wrote. "Providing work, firewood, transport to polling stations and, in one case, even access to medicine, in exchange for the "correct" vote on election day, according to claims made in the film." BiB should point out that private polling booths do exist even in the sticks of Hungary. Having expended all their bandwidth on the independent filmmakers, the BBC will not be reporting on the MCC's new paper: The Managed Ballot (Schenk et al). A hundred pages that picks through the EU playbook on shaping national elections, through a complex chain of the Digital Services Act, intelligence, judicial bullying, and fund withholding. The report picks out three cases in particular: Romania - wrong candidate gets tarred with 'Russian TikTok' allegations and disbarred Poland - seven years of withholding funds, Euro-court overrules, and opposition-funding. And Czechia - where Babiš won anyway, despite the EU installing its Rapid Response System, which gave various foreign NGOs privileged access to content-moderation channels during the elections.
Eminent British journalist David Aaronovitch may have lost his column in the Times, but that hasn't stopped him from Bouncing Back. The left-liberal Aaronovitch has turned his focus to Substack, and there, last week produced a less-than-glowing review of our Pusey House Christian Revival conference, in which he broke every Chatham House rule going. Convenor Jonathan Price was aware Aaronovitch wanted to get in, but decided to admit him - even to the private sessions - in a spirit of Christian charity. It all reminded Based In Budapest of a legendary folk-tale about the bombastic Aaronovitch, in which he is conned by an Albanian into buying a fake leather jacket. Judge his acumen for yourself.
Paper of the Week
Derisking Children: The Foundations of Hungarian Family Policy
Across the world, as Europe stares into the demographic abyss, policy makers are fishing around for a solution they should have begun to work on twenty years ago. Hungary's answer might still be imperfect, say Gergely Szűcs and Mátyás Vajda, but it at least understood the question. In fact, as they point out, the Hungarian family policy is the lodestone of a greater re-imagining of the role of the welfare state: a move away from piecemeal handouts, towards a human flourishing state: a system that takes an active view on what the good life looks like.
According to data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, the average age of women at the birth of their first child rose from around 23 years in the early 1990s to approximately 29 years by 2023. While the underlying causes of this shift are complex and cannot be attributed to a single factor, public policy has increasingly sought to create more favourable conditions for younger generations contemplating starting a family. From 2026, this measure reduces monthly tax liability by up to HUF 20,000 for one child, HUF 40,000 per child for two children and HUF 66,000 per child in families with three or more children. In this way, the financial recognition of parenthood may begin even before the child is born. Alongside the family tax allowance, several targeted personal income tax exemptions have been introduced. Employees under the age of 25 are exempt from personal income tax on earnings up to a defined threshold, while mothers under the age of 30 may be entitled to full tax exemption following the birth of their child. Read More
Comings & Goings
Going
Daniel Hannan, Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, is the godfather of Brexit. At the DI, he’s spent the past six months working on a soon-to-be-released survey of Conservatism in the Anglosphere, alongside David Oldroyd Bolt. We’ll miss the late night chats and the extemporised Shakespeare soliloquies. .
Dates For Your Diary
NatCon Brussels — AprilARC Conference — 23-25 June"Egy bolond százat csinál"
— A fool makes a hundred. (Stupidity spreads fast).