Speaking at a press conference in Budapest, Júlia Ábrahám, a member of the party’s national board, said there was no reason why Hungarian doctors and nurses should earn even less than their colleagues in other eastern European countries.

“Let us be bold and try to catch up with Slovakia,” she said, pledging that if LMP came into power after the election, they would instantly raise the wages of healthcare employees by 50% while also increasing the allowances of people working in the sector for the duration of the following five years.

Ábrahám said governments in the past decades had only allocated the minimum level of resources to the health-care sector. Accordingly, Hungarians pay the most for medical treatment from their own pocket in Europe, and Hungary tops the list in terms of the proportion of cancer deaths in the European Union, she said.

LMP, she pledged, would make prevention in health care a priority in all areas of government, re-establish an independent health ministry, create a health ombudsman and ensure equal opportunities to health services in all areas of the country. In response, the governing Fidesz said in a statement that if “Soros’s candidates” came into power, the money would be spent on providing for migrants rather than on wage rises for health-care workers or anyone else.

“In fact, there would be tax rises and austerity schemes because Hungarian workers would have to pay the cost of settling and sustaining migrants in the country,” the statement said.

MTI Photo: Soós Lajos