Jobbik calls for European wage equality
July 10th, 2017As the Jobbik party calls for European level wages for Hungarian employees, a former Minister of Industry and Trade cautions against such state intervention.
Jobbik calls for a ‘European wage union’, and demands that Hungarian employees earn equal salaries to their Western European counterparts.
In Heti Válasz, Péter Ákos Bod points out that standardized ‘European wages’ do not exist. Without mentioning Jobbik by name, the conservative economist and former Minister of Industry and Trade (1990-91) admits that the call for ‘European wages’ in Hungary is a popular slogan, but he finds it highly illusionary. Wages differ according to the level of productivity and development, and so there are immense income differences even within countries, Bod notes. He suggests that real wages in Budapest are not much lower than the European average, while workers in Eastern Hungary receive far less. In fact, if the Hungarian government introduced higher wages, many companies would close and unemployment would soar, Bod concludes.