In this long commentary Mitchell A. Orenstein criticises the West for demonising Hungary’s autocrat, Viktor Orban, while ignoring why he – thanks to his family policy – is so popular among domestic voters. Orban brings in a "family protection action plan", which includes measures that make Hungarian women with multiple children exempt from income tax for life. His regime is seeking to boost the country’s shrinking population – rather than open the door to immigration and multiculturalism.

The author rebukes Western analysts for being critical of Orban’s family policy, urging mainstream political leaders to “learn this economic lesson fast if they want to compete against their own populist challengers.” He says, Orban wins domestic support not for being anti-Muslim, but “for delivering economic policies that benefit average people,” like granting lifetime income tax break for mothers with four or more children. They receive favourable mortgage terms and financial support for a family car. The regime increases funding for daycare centres and kindergartens.

No doubt Hungary’s economy has improved under Orban. Government debt to GDP has fallen. Its credit ratings have improved. The budget deficit has roughly halved. Growth has almost quadrupled. Wages have risen by more than 10%. Though still high, poverty has fallen, and – officially – unemployment has dropped. But Hungary’s growth has been largely fuelled by EU money. Between 2009 and 2016, such funding constituted nearly 4% of its annual GDP, one of the highest ratios in the bloc.

Orban has been milking the EU for as much as he can get away from, while violating EU norms. It suits him that the bloc functions as a huge labour market for Hungarian jobseekers. When his rogue regime says 730,000 new jobs have been created since 2010, it does not reveal that the number also includes some 350,000 Hungarians, who have found work elsewhere in the EU.

Before his Fidesz party came to power, Hungarians could hold 25% of their retirement savings in a private fund, while the rest went into a public pot. To cut government debt, the regime warned that Hungarians who did not transfer private pension assets into the public system would not receive a state pension. By the time the order was ruled unconstitutional, most people had already complied.

Yet Orban is loathed in Brussels, not for his family policy, which aims to ease the financial burden on Hungarian families with multiple children, but for his anti-EU rhetoric and nationalist agenda. On March 20, the European People’s Party, the conservative bloc in the European Parliament (EP), will decide whether to expel Hungary’s ruling party, Orban’s Fidesz. Last September the EP voted to take unprecedented disciplinary action against Hungary over breaches of the EU's core values, accusing Budapest of attacks on the rule of law, the media and minorities.

While other Central European countries have become less corrupt, Hungary ranked 64th – up two spots from the year before – according to the 2018 Transparency International Index. In Europe, only Greece and Bulgaria performed worse. During Orban’s first six years in power, five of his closest friends were awarded roughly 5% of public procurement contracts, a total of $2.5 billion, according to an analysis by the Corruption Research Center Budapest. He plans to tap European taxpayers to bankroll a $3 billion tourism project on Lake Balaton, from which his son-in-law, Istvan Tiborcz stands to collect almost half of any profits. Since Tiborcz married Orban’s eldest daughter, Rahel, in 2013 he became heavily involved in projects backed by EU-funds.

These are the reasons why the EU is determined to show the world that its member states need to uphold the core values of the bloc.