Hungary hardly grants asylum or other protection to refugees. This emerges from figures published by the Budapest daily „Nepszava“ and which the State Directorate General for Foreign Police Affairs had given to it on request.
In 2019, only 60 people who applied for asylum in Hungary would have received asylum or other protection. In the previous year there were 367 and in 2017 1,291 people.
The proportion of rejected asylum applications, on the other hand, increased by leaps and bounds. While more than half of the 671 applicants for protection had received it in 2018, in 2019 only twelve percent of 500 applicants were recognized as seeking protection. Around half of the asylum applications were made by minors in 2019.
Foreclosure and deterrence policies
Under right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary is pursuing a policy of foreclosing and deterring refugees and migrants. Asylum applications can only be made in two „transit zones“ on the border with Serbia. Those seeking protection usually wait months and years for admission to these facilities, which are similar to internment camps.
Hungary had consistently ignored the quotas for the distribution of asylum seekers decided by the EU in 2015 – similar to Poland and the Czech Republic. An infringement procedure is therefore underway before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) against the three countries.
Hungary also no longer has an independent asylum authority. The former immigration and refugee office was renamed the State Directorate General for Foreign Police Affairs in July last year and incorporated into the police force.
