The Court of Justice of the European Union began its hearing on Hungary’s child protection law this week. Hungary faces opposition from 16 EU member states and the European Commission, which have labelled the law as ‘anti-LGBTQ’. A ruling against Budapest could carry significant and unforeseen implications for the future of the European Union.
András Halbritter, founder of the foundation promoting school gardens in Hungary, recalled that the movement began in Germany after the Chernobyl disaster and started in Hungary following the regime change, accelerating in the early 2010s. The expert listed several goals of the school garden programme, including instilling a love of the land in children, promoting a focus on sustainability, encouraging young people to consider agricultural careers, and practically imparting ecological literacy.
In the second episode of the conversation series held as part of SopronFest, János Áder, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Blue Planet Climate Protection Foundation and generational researcher Krisztián Steigervald explored the impact of the digital world on the climate and human interactions.
‘We have a presence on many sites and platforms online, and we are investigating every part of the internet where users can chat, exchange or upload and share materials with each other, or can publish articles on a certain topic, or any social media or cloud sharing service, and even video game platforms,’ Captain Bence Szabó of the Hungarian National Bureau of Investigation told our website.
‘Last week in the United States, President Joe Biden released new rules governing Title IX, a part of American civil rights law governing its application to discrimination against women. With no participation of Congress, Biden’s administration declared that the Title IX rules now generally apply to transgendered people. The meaning of this cannot be understated. The civil rights law passed to protect women now protects men who declare themselves to be women.’
In 2020 and 2021 both the number of births and the fertility rate increased in Hungary during the COVID-19 pandemic because the poverty and disadvantage of those with children relative to childless people decreased to such an extent that having children was no longer a financial disadvantage in 2019 and 2021.
Fidesz MP and Interior Ministry State Secretary Bence Rétvári has announced that a new amendment proposal had been submitted to the Child Protection Act to parliament, with the goal of making children even safer from child abusers.
GDP per capita growth has been above the EU-27 average in every year since 2010, so the Hungarian economy has grown faster than the EU average. Our decline in 2020 was also below average, and even below the large decline in 2009—despite the fact that the EU average decline in 2020 was larger than in 2009.
Concerned parents wrote an open letter to the local government, demanding that the head of the kindergarten be suspended until the conclusion of the police investigation, in fear that the opposition-led leadership might try to squash the scandal ahead of the municipal elections in June.
Sharenting, a portmanteau of sharing and parenting, refers to the practice of parents (or even grandparents) regularly sharing photos and information about their (grand)children on social media platforms. Some prefer to use the term oversharenting, highlighting that issues concerning the infringement of the privacy rights of children are not necessarily linked to the fact that parents post content about their loved ones on these platforms, but that they do it in an excessive and arbitrary way, which crosses a line.