Economy: Arrest Soros before the Court of Justice of the European Communities

The Court of Justice of the European Communities held a hearing in Luxembourg on the so-called Stop Soros package. The aim is, among other things, to find out whether the criminalization of non-governmental organizations that provide humanitarian aid to asylum seekers is compatible with EU law.

The procedure was initiated by the European Commission, basically in two areas Hungarian law was considered to be contrary to EU law. According to the Commission:

• the legal institution of the country of safe transit infringes Community law by declaring the application for asylum inadmissible,
• The Hungarian authority illegally restricts the activities of people who provide advice and assistance to asylum seekers and thus also restricts the rights of asylum seekers guaranteed by international conventions.

The Court of Justice of the European Communities has already ruled on the safe transit country in the past, later it was stated that this legal institution only serves to make it impossible to examine individual asylum applications. Therefore, it was stated that the Hungarian authorities could not apply it validly.

Later, however, it was not the legislator who decided to modify the infringement procedure, but rather a new internal regulation was introduced. The essence of this is that an asylum application can only be made by first presenting a letter of intent to the applicant at the Hungarian embassy of a third country. Based on this, a decision is made as to whether the applicant can travel to Hungary to submit his application. Although this legislation was not enacted until this summer, the European Commission has already started infringement procedures in this regard.

According to the EUrologist, representatives of the Hungarian government and the European Commission also presented their views at the current hearing, and then the Court asked questions. Given that the European Court of Justice has already ruled on the legal assessment of a safe transit country, the same can certainly be said for Stop Soros. What is at stake in this procedure is whether the court will declare the Hungarian in breach of duty.

Justice Minister Judit Varga wrote on Facebook: “Since 2015, we have seen that in Brussels they want to avoid having to allocate resources to member states – and even penalize those countries – that do not want to receive illegal immigrants. Look, this procedure is another good example of this. “

However, according to previous judgments and procedural documents, the interpretation of the law by the Court of Justice of the European Communities is more sophisticated and has nothing to do with “the reception of illegal immigrants”.

We also learned that the Court of Justice of the European Communities will deliver judgment on December 17 in another case, which also affects Hungarian asylum law. It also deals with the treatment of refugees, in particular with regard to certain procedural guarantees for asylum seekers.

In the case, the Court’s Advocate General has previously set out his legal position, stating that Hungarian law infringes EU law. Therefore, if the court decides according to the opinion of the Advocate General, which is not mandatory, but in most cases it will be, there will be more evidence that Hungarian law did not meet the requirements of the rule of law .