Report on child protection reveals serious state of…

Report on child protection reveals serious state of Hungarian system

12.09.2026 11:00 HotInfo

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar presented a 200-page report on the state of the child protection system. According to Gyurkó Szilvia, the system is on the brink of collapse, and in 2024 it suffered its greatest blow. Approximately 800 children are on the run long-term, because the system failed to keep them. Index.hu ↗

Gyurkó Szilvia stated that experts knew about the problems but did not realize their scale. She emphasized that the state of the system cannot be blamed on the workers, who often try to keep it running at the expense of their own privacy. She also asked the public to view the stories from the report with consideration for both the children and the staff.

As an example, she cited the case of three siblings whom experts singled out from among the "rats," but had nowhere to place them. Kátai-Németh Vilmos pointed to the shortage of staff in facilities and to children waiting to be removed from their families.

Magyar claims that the ministry led by Sándor Pintér knew exactly what was happening in child protection. He also presented a document according to which, in 2016, Viktor Orbán proposed an award for the director of a children's home in Bicske, who was later convicted of pedophilia. The prime minister stated that serious abuse occurred with the knowledge of the power structures. Index.hu ↗

Political responsibility is being discussed in parliament, and Pintér may also be questioned. The government has decided on an intervention worth tens of billions of forints. Magyar also said that the country can now begin to recover and that those responsible must be named. STVR (Minúta po minúte) ↗

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