The European Court of Justice has imposed financial sanctions on Hungary because the country has not implemented EU asylum rules. Hungary must pay 200 million euros and a daily penalty of one million euros.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has imposed financial sanctions on Hungary. The reason is that the country has not implemented the EU asylum rules, the judges in Luxembourg ruled. The ECJ has therefore sentenced Hungary to a fine of 200 million euros. In addition, from now on one million euros for each additional day that it does not comply with the demands of an ECJ ruling from December 2020.
At the time, the ECJ had criticized Hungary for returning refugees to Serbia without adequate legal protection or for imprisoning them in so-called transit zones. At the time, refugees were often denied the opportunity to apply for international protection. New rules then stipulated that asylum seekers had to undergo a preliminary procedure in Hungarian embassies before they could possibly enter Hungary to apply for asylum there. The ECJ also overturned this rule last year.
The European Commission considered that Hungary had still not complied with the 2020 ruling, except with regard to the transit zones, which it had already closed before the ruling was announced. The authority therefore filed a new infringement action in 2022 and requested a penalty payment against Hungary.
Unusually clear verdict
The EU’s highest judges now followed the EU Commission’s argumentation with unusual determination. In its judgment, the Court finds that Hungary has not taken the measures necessary to implement the 2020 ruling. Hungary is “deliberately” circumventing the EU’s common refugee policy. This “breach of the principle of loyal cooperation” is “a significant threat to the unity of Union law” and a “serious breach of the principle of solidarity”. On the one hand, this affects the refugees, while at the same time Hungary is shifting the actual and financial responsibility onto the other EU states.
Hungary’s right-wing nationalist government has been reprimanded by the EU Commission on several occasions because of its rigid refugee policy. In previous rulings, the ECJ has already declared essential parts of the Hungarian asylum system to be illegal.
Hungary is not the only country that has been fined in recent years. In 2021, Poland was ordered by the ECJ to pay one million euros a day for failing to implement supreme court rulings on a controversial judicial reform. The amount was later halved.