Index – Foreign – The Court of Justice of the European Communities has ruled that Hungary is violating EU law with refugees

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Hungary has not complied with its EU legal obligations regarding procedures for granting international protection and expelling third-country citizens in an illegal situation, the European Union Court of Justice said in a ruling published on Thursday.

In the case, the European Commission has launched an infringement procedure against Hungary, citing various EU directives. In the Commission’s view, Hungary has infringed them by:

• The asylum application can only be made in a transit zone, whose entry is limited to a small number of people, which denies effective access to the asylum procedure.
• Asylum applications are always decided in transit zones, without complying with the provisions of the Procedural Directive that if a decision is not made within four weeks, the asylum seeker must be allowed entry.
• the fact that asylum seekers have to remain in the transit zone during the processing of their application means that all asylum seekers in Hungary are systematically detained, which is not in line with the Reception Conditions Directive;
• Hungary expels citizens from outside the EU who remain illegally on its territory without respecting the procedure and guarantees provided for in the Refund Directive;
• Without prejudice to the relevant provisions of the Procedural Directive, Hungary does not guarantee that an appeal against a negative asylum decision is, in principle, suspensive. By comparison, the Hungarian authorities should allow asylum seekers to remain legally in Hungary even during a possible review procedure.

In its judgment, the Court of Justice of the European Communities accepted the Commission’s objections in virtually all respects, and

Since March 2016, the crisis situation caused by mass immigration has been in force in Hungary. In the meantime, if a third country citizen (neither Hungarian nor non-EU) cannot prove that they are legally present in the country (for example, because they do not have a valid passport, they have a passport but they do not have a visa, they have a visa but it has expired), you will be transferred to a police car. and pushed to the Serbian side through one of the gates built into the Röszke border fence at certain distances, András Léderer, an asylum expert with the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, told the Index. Immigrants from third countries can be deported from anywhere in the country, from Ferihegy airport or even from the Hungarian-Austrian border to Serbia. Since these doors are usually in the middle of nowhere,

– András Léderer said. This is called reinforcement in technical language. According to data from the Hungarian police, almost 50,000 return operations have been carried out since July 2016. The measure, called collective expulsion in law, he added, is contrary not only to the country’s international obligations (EU law, European Convention on Human Rights), but even to the Basic Law.

Regarding transit areas, the European Court of Justice once convicted Hungary for them on May 14, 2020. At that time, the Szeged Administrative and Labor Court asked the panel for a preliminary ruling on two applicants Iranian asylum seekers and two Afghans. He said the verdict. that the transit zone is a custody in which no one can be detained for more than 28 days. By comparison, those involved – an Afghan couple and an Iranian man and son – were detained for 464 and 526 days, respectively. According to the European Court of Justice, a transit zone is a deprivation of liberty because detainees cannot legally leave in any direction.

A week after the verdict, Gergely Gulyás, head of the Prime Minister’s Office, announced that transit zones would be abolished and that approximately 300 detainees would be transferred to fully or partially open refugee shelters. They spent an average of one year in a transit zone. Gergely Gulyás said that the Orbán government considers the verdict unacceptable and contradictory, but it is mandatory to comply with it, so they cannot do more than liquidate.