Hungary has to pay a lump sum of €200 million, with an additional €1 million a day for failing to comply with EU asylum policies, according to a court ruling on June 13th by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called the politically motivated verdict “outrageous and unacceptable.” Here’s what you need to know about the case.
Hungary’s no-nonsense migration policies
The conservative government of Hungary, led by Prime Minister Orbán Viktor, has taken a hard line against illegal immigration since the start of the migration crisis in 2015 when more than one million people, most of them Syrian, entered the European Union illegally, crossing the EU’s borders without going through border checks, and, in many instances, without documentation. Hundreds of thousands of these migrants entered the EU via Hungary from Serbia. As a member state of the EU and the border-free Schengen Area, Hungary is obliged to defend its external EU borders. The government decided to do just that by erecting a fence on its border with Serbia (a non-EU country) and Croatia (a then-EU member but non-Schengen member country) to stop illegal border violations.
Hungarian border police officiers patrol on horses on December 15, 2022 at the Hungarian-Serbian border, close to Kelebia village. In August 2022, the Hungarian government decided to strengthen the already existing 165-kilometer security border fence and build a new border protection system at the south part of the border.
Photo: Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP
Despite facing criticism from most of the Western world for not allowing in “refugees,” Hungary argued that both Serbia and Croatia were safe countries, and migrants should have applied for asylum there, not marched through Europe illegally with the aid of people smugglers. Hungary also established so-called transit zones on its border with Serbia where asylum seekers were held, their asylum claims fast-tracked. Some of them spent weeks and months in the zone, leading to outcry from human rights organisations who spoke of “inhumane conditions.” Migrants whose claims were rejected were deported back to Serbia. Hungary said the measures were necessary for the protection of Europe’s borders and Hungarian citizens.
Border violations and border control
Since 2016, Hungary has been enabling its police to deport foreigners lacking valid documentation directly to Serbia. These measures are taken against migrants who illegally cross the border, sometimes with the aid of people smugglers, effectively committing a crime. Migrants frequently damage the border fence, having caused tens of thousands of euros worth of damage. There are also regular instances of migrants attacking Hungarian border guards. ‘Pushbacks’ have been ruled illegal by European courts, saying they are in “violation of the prohibition on collective expulsions.”
The EU court’s first verdict
The European Court of Justice (ECJ), the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law, ruled in 2020 that Budapest’s policies had restricted access to international protection, unlawfully detained asylum applicants and failed to observe their right to stay in Hungary while their application went through the full due process.
The ECJ is made up of one judge from each member country and has been known to make rulings that align with European Commission policies. In an interview with The European Conservative, Polish Law & Justice then-MEP Ryszard Legutko described the Court this way:
The European Court of Justice is [the Commission’s] ally because it pursues the same policy, to have more and more power. The whole idea of the primacy of European law is not in the treaties—it’s the product of the Court. The ECJ declared that EU law has priority over national law without asking us, the national parliaments.
Successful deterrence of illegal migrants
Shortly after the ECJ ruling, Hungary closed the transit zones, and introduced legislation, under which migrants can only submit requests for asylum outside Hungary’s borders, at its embassies in neighbouring Serbia or Ukraine, non-EU states. The measure has successfully deterred migrants from seeking asylum in Hungary which received only 30 applications last year, and 45 the year before—an extremely low number compared to 351,500 applications in 2023 in Germany, 58,700 in Austria, and 1,750 in Croatia. Certain people, such as Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion, are exempt from the Hungarian rules, highlighting the fact that Hungary accepts real asylum seekers, people who are fleeing war, and seeking refuge in the first safe country they arrive in. Almost 5 million Ukrainian refugees have crossed the Hungarian border since the start of the war more than two years ago, and 43,000 of them have registered for temporary protection status in Hungary.
The second ruling
The European Commission, which is responsible for monitoring the 27 EU member states’ compliance with EU laws, took the view that Budapest had still not complied, and requested the European Court of Justice to fine Hungary. The ECJ last year ruled that outsourcing asylum applications to the Hungarian embassies in Belgrade and Kyiv is a breach of EU law, which requires that asylum seekers be allowed into a member state to seek protection and to stay there until their claim is handled.
In its ruling on Thursday, the court, despite acknowledging that the transit zones have been closed, argued that Hungary had violated the bloc’s international protection rules by “disproportionately interfering” with the rights of asylum seekers “to make an application for international protection upon their arrival at a Hungarian border.” The ECJ also chided Hungary for not implementing its 2020 ruling, saying: “That failure, which consists in deliberately avoiding the application of a common EU policy as a whole, constitutes an unprecedented and extremely serious infringement of EU law.” The court backs the European Commission’s request for the fine against Hungary, saying it was pursuing a path that “seriously undermines the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility between the member states.”
The Commission demands money, so does Hungary
The ECJ ordered Hungary to pay a fine of €200 million for persistently breaking the bloc’s asylum rules, plus an additional €1 million for every day it fails to comply. The fine is much higher than the European Commission had requested: a €7 million lump sum, and a daily fine of 6 million forints (€15,000). If Hungary refuses to pay, the money will be automatically subtracted from the country’s allocated share of the EU budget, parts of which remain frozen over so-called ‘rule of law’ violations.
Hungary has thwarted one million illegal border crossings on its southern borders since 2015 and has prevented at least 100,000 illegal migrants from entering Hungary this year alone. Finance Minister Mihály Varga recently said that Hungary has spent more than 1.6 billion forints (€4 million) for border protection in the past nine years but the EU has only contributed to 1% of the costs.
Timing of the verdict raises eyebrows
The timing of the verdict raises suspicions about the EU institutions’ real intent. The ruling comes just a few days after the European elections, in which Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz scored a resounding victory, securing 45% of the votes. It also comes a few weeks before the start of Hungary’s EU Presidency, meaning the EU Commission may be seeking to delegitimise the government.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called the verdict “outrageous and unacceptable,” attributing it to the influence of Hungarian-born U.S. billionaire George Soros’ advocates within the “Brussels bubble.” Orbán added: “It seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens.” The political director of the prime minister, Balázs Orbán, tweeted: “I do wonder how much longer the Schengen Area can last if Brussels goes out of its way to punish and fine those who actively protect it.”
György Bakondi, the prime minister’s Chief Security Adviser said it is no coincidence that the ruling comes just days after the European elections because a judgement before the elections would have resulted in even bigger gains for anti-immigration parties. He argued that protecting the Schengen border should align with ensuring legal security and public safety, not lead to punitive measures from Brussels. Zsolt Bayer, a well-known conservative journalist and commentator is organising a protest against the decision outside the European Commission’s Budapest headquarters on Friday, June 14th.
