While Poland in recent years has received some very positive attention for the way it is converging with richer countries, the same is not true for Hungary.

Indeed, it recently got some negative publicity. According to data from the European Commission, it is now the poorest E.U. country, when measured on the basis of household consumption.

Here’s the map showing Hungary at 72 percent of the E.U. average.

An article from the Economic Times examines this new data and is not flattering.

Hungary has officially become the poorest country in the European Union in terms of household welfare… The numbers show that Hungarian households now consume just 72% of the EU average, which is the lowest among all 27 member states, according to the report. …While Hungary’s GDP is currently at about 77% of the EU average, which is above several low-income EU nations, its households continue to remain poorer in terms of consumption… This gap reflects that Hungary’s economic output is not transforming into real benefits for Hungarian families, according to the report. …Under Orbán’s leadership, “the state-owned industries have been hollowed out, public subsidies redirected to political allies, and EU funds commandeered by power networks close to the government,” as reported.

Back in 2022, Joseph Sternberg of the Wall Street Journal opined about Hungary not being a role model because Orban takes so much money from Brussels.

One of the stranger phenomena of the age is that a certain kind of conservative now holds out Hungary as the model of Christian governance to which the West should aspire. …The case for Orbánism is that Mr. Orbán fights. His international reputation and some of his domestic success are built on a string of fierce political conflicts with European Union grandees in Brussels and across the bloc’s other member countries. Mr. Orbán resisted the EU’s opening to mass migration from the Middle East in 2015. He has crossed swords with civil-society goo-goos over laws aimed at reducing the political influence of the likes of Hungarian-born left-wing billionaire George Soros… All of this is deeply offensive to so-called good Europeans in politics, academia and the media. …The only problem for the credibility of Mr. Orbán’s fans is that he never actually fights all that hard.  …the EU remains popular in Hungary. Some 47% of Hungarian respondents had a positive view of the EU and only 13% had a negative view… Mr. Orbán’s claim on EU resources turns the sovereignty argument on its head. What’s at stake in Hungary isn’t the sovereignty of Hungarians to make decisions about immigration or social policy. No one is stopping them, provided they’re willing to fund their own government.

Since I wrote back in 2021 that Denmark was much more market-oriented than Hungary, I obviously don’t feel any reflexive need to defend Orban or his government.

That being said, there has been some convergence. Looking at 2010 data (when Orban began his current reign), Hungary was at 57 percent of the OECD average for consumption. A decade later, it was about 63 percent of the average.

The problem for Hungary is that it could be converging faster.

As you can see from the Fraser Institute’s data, there was a big improvement in economic liberty after the collapse of the Soviet Empire. But, for all intents and purposes, there’s been no improvement over the past two decades.

Ranking #55 in the world is not bad, but it’s also not a recipe for rapid convergence.

Ideally, Hungary should copy the policies of top-ranked Singapore. But copying 20th-ranked Estonia also would be a big step in the right direction.

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Image credit: European Parliament | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.