Central and Eastern European leaders tackle demographic challenges in Hungary

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BUDAPEST, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- The importance of family and the need to solve demographic problems were emphasized by Central and Eastern European leaders at the Budapest Demographic Summit III here on Thursday.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis before the start of the two-day summit which kicked off here Thursday.

"It is right thing to do to bring demographic change to the forefront of current challenges, which require immediate action," Vucic said. "It is important for each country, for Central Europe and in the sake of the continent's future to solve these problems," he added. Serbia is ready to work with Hungary and other Central European countries to tackle the demographic challenges.

Babis said that demographic change was not as popular a topic as climate change, but stressed that shrinking populations could have "equally serious consequences." A good state is known by its people who are not afraid of their future, where the population is growing, but not through migration, according to him.

"Without families and children, a national community can disappear, and if a nation disappears, something irreplaceable disappears from the world," Orban said in his speech.

He underlined the fact that he wanted to keep away migration as a possible solution from demographic challenges. "On demographic issues, the migration-solution must be kept far away, it cannot contribute to a population change," he underlined.

He also rejected firmly the recent "green nonsense", according to which, fewer children should be born in order to let the Planet be alleviated. "Man is not an opponent of the ecosystem, but a part of it, therefore, the two should not be confronted with each other," he stressed.

The purpose of the event is to discuss demographics, one of the greatest challenges of the current era, the Hungarian government announced before the start of the event.

"Hungary is determined to address the problem of population decline, a challenge faced by the industrial nations, and has kept the issue on the agenda ever since 2010. Hungary's response is a strong pro-family policy rather than encouraging mass migration," the government said on its website. Enditem

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