Hungary’s opposition Jobbik to campaign on higher wages in 2018 election

Hungary’s radical nationalist opposition Jobbik party will campaign in 2018 elections on a drive for higher wages as it says the country’s huge wage gap relative to western Europe has triggered a mass migration westward that must be stopped.

Jobbik has been moving away from its roots as a far-right, anti-Semitic radical group and is targeting a broader swathe of the electorate ahead of next year’s vote, aiming to build on its 11 percent support rate in recent polls.

Party leader Gabor Vona told a news conference on Tuesday that low wages relative to western Europe had led hundreds of thousands of people to head for the west and also helped increase the indebtedness of Hungarian households over the past decade.

“We believe this (low wages) is the most important issue in Hungary, and the root cause of all other problems,” Vona said.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government has already been hiking wages and has also raised minimum wage levels sharply.

In March, Jobbik launched an initiative with politicians from eight Central European countries calling for a “European Wage Union” aimed at seeking more equal wages within the EU.

The committee that launched this initiative includes Jaak Madison, an Estonian politician who represents the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia, and Poland’s Solidarity80 trade union, Jobbik said.

Vona said Jobbik was also committed to Hungary’s European Union membership.

“We have submitted the wage union proposal to Brussels as we believe the unity of the EU can be preserved and Central and Eastern European countries can also find their part in it,” he said.