Hungarian women who have four children or more will be exempt from income tax for good, the right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced Sunday in a bid to counter a falling population and labour shortages without accepting immigrants.

“There are fewer and fewer children born in Europe,” Mr Orban said during his annual State of the Nation address. “For the west, the answer is immigration. For every missing child there should be one coming in and then the numbers will be fine. But we do not need numbers. We need Hungarian children.”

The tax scheme was one of a number of initiatives the anti-immigration premier announced, including healthcare investments worth Ft700bn (£1.92bn); loans to newly-weds worth Ft10m that could be partially or fully written off if the couple bore two or three children; money for family car purchases; and increased capacity for childcare facilities. The government also promised mortgage assistance tied to childbirth and a kind of maternity or paternity leave for grandparents.

Mr Orban, who himself has five children, did not elaborate on how the government would cover the costs of the announced measures and vowed to maintain levels of economic growth 2 per cent higher than the EU average.

The premier also mentioned the upcoming European Parliament elections, lambasting “pro-migration” forces in Brussels, calling European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans “a socialist” appointed by Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros to fill Europe with immigrants in support of a “new internationalism”.

He said that permitting migration resulted in “mixed population countries” in which Christians would eventually become a minority.

“Those who ride that train will go to the last station and there’s no return ticket,” he said.

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