One month after the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled against the general deportation of asylum seekers, Hungary is still sticking to this practice. Since the judgment, the border police have forced more than 3,000 refugees and migrants across the border with Serbia without them having had the opportunity to apply for asylum, said Andras Lederer of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee in Budapest today.
On December 17th, the ECJ ruled that Hungary was violating European asylum law. The judges considered the deportation of irregularly entered migrants without examining the individual case to be unlawful (Case C-808/18). In doing so, they agreed to a lawsuit by the EU Commission. She had complained that „migrants are returned without the appropriate guarantees and in violation of the principle of non-refoulement“.
„Open breach of law“
Lederer held Hungary “openly breaking the law”. “It is simply outrageous that things should continue like this after the verdict.” Over the years, the committee documented numerous alleged violations of human rights by the Hungarian authorities. According to this, migrants are said to have been beaten and mistreated by Hungarian border officials.
Hungary has been carrying out deportations since autumn 2015. At that time, the right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban had a metal fence built on the border with Serbia. Migrants and asylum seekers have since tried to get past this fence. It is not possible for them to submit asylum applications at the regular border crossings.
The migrants almost exclusively want to reach western Europe. If they are picked up on Hungarian territory, the police usually bring them to the fence at the border without recording their personal details. There they have to go through functional gates to Serbia.
Report: Hungary refers to national laws
The authorities of the EU and Schengen member states present these deportations as rejections. The border officials only “accompanied illegal migrants” to the gates so that they could leave Hungary for Serbia. Following a request from the online portal “euobserver.com”, the government referred to national laws.
Last May, the ECJ had already declared the transit zones that Hungary had set up on the border with Serbia to be illegal. Hungary then closed the two camps near the Röszke and Kelebia border crossings. Hungary had made a small number of refugees from Serbia wait there for months for their asylum applications to be processed.
