EU court orders Hungary to pay huge fine over migrant policy

Hungary has been ordered to pay a €200 million ($216m) fine for not implementing changes to its policy covering migrants and asylum seekers, the EU’s top court said on Thursday. According to Reuters, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban described this on Facebook as “outrageous and unacceptable”.

The right-wing nationalist government in Budapest has refused to carry out the 2020 court ruling. It will be required to pay an additional daily fine of one million euros ($1.08m) until it implements the measures fully.

In its verdict, the European Court of Justice said that Hungary had failed to take measures “to comply with the 2020 judgement as regards the right of applicants for international protection to remain in Hungary pending a final decision on their appeal against the rejection of their application and the removal of illegally staying third-country nationals.”

Orban’s government has argued that the 2020 ruling was moot as it had already closed so-called “transit-zones” while also hardening rules to bar future asylum applicants.

Under current legislation, people can only submit requests for asylum from outside Hungary’s borders, at its embassies in neighbouring Serbia or Ukraine. Those who try to cross the border are routinely pushed back.

The right-wing prime minister has often clashed with the EU’s executive commission on issues ranging from the independence of the Hungarian judiciary to sending arms to Ukraine. He vowed in 2021 to “maintain the existing regime [regarding asylum seekers] even if the European court orders us to change it.”

The European Commission filed a second application to the court in early 2022, saying Hungary had not taken all necessary measures to comply with the panel’s 2020 judgment. “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,” said the ECJ in today’s verdict.

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