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March 17, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
Hungarian Helsinki Committee, told bne Intel- liNews. The verdict deemed unlawful Hungary’s key policies of automatically pushing refugees and mi- grants back to what it deems the “safe, third coun- try” of Serbia and the automatic, indiscriminate detention of all asylum-seekers in transit zones.
Based on this judgment, the detention of over 11,000 asylum-seekers without any detention order and without any judicial oversight at Hun- garian transit zones since their construction in September 2015 has been ruled unlawful. While it is unlikely that these persons would seek redress in Strasbourg now—nearly all of them have left Hungary—those currently being held in the transit zones or the hundreds who will be transported to them later this month may seek compensation by this means, leading to dozens or even hundreds of similar cases at the Strasbourg Court.
The Hungarian government has shown no sign of changing its strict policy of deterrence, however: the day after the judgement was made, President Janos Ader authorised a bill to institute similar treatment for all asylum seekers in Hungary, an indication of the extent to which Hungary’s demo- cratic checks and balances have been weakened under Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The law is scheduled to enter into force some- times at the end of March, meaning that all asylum-seekers in the country – either in “asylum prisons” or open reception facilities – will also be transported to the transit zones.
Push-backs and internment in transit zones are not the only measures that has made Hungary an outlier on the treatment of refugees and migrants in the EU. The country is also in the process of constructing a second, electrified border fence, has cut nearly all subsidies to recognised refu- gees, and has eliminated procedural safeguards and judicial reviews. Hungary has also arbitrarily
limited the number of asylum-seekers admitted to its transit zones on the Serbian-Hungarian border, from 15 a day, then 10, then as of January 2017 only five per day, and on weekdays only.
Gyulai told bne IntelliNews that, “these rules are totally blind to individual vulnerabilities and pro- tection needs and treat refugees as if they were ‘illegal migrants’, denying the country’s protection obligations. This clearly goes against the interna- tional institution of asylum, which also gave pro- tection to hundreds of thousands of Hungarians fleeing from the communist dictatorship.”
In 2016, Hungary once again had by far the low- est “recognition rate” on asylum claims in the EU. While the EU average was 63%, in Hungary this rate was only 9%, Eurostat found. That rate was 72% in Austria, 69% in Germany, 83% in Slovakia – a country whose government has also employed virulent anti-refugee rhetoric – and 44% in Bul- garia. Around two-thirds of the asylum seekers
in Hungary came from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, yet last year Hungary rejected 91% of its Syrian applicants, 87% of the Iraqis and 94% of the Afghans.
The main impact of the March 14 judgement could ultimately be on the EU. While the Stras- bourg Court interprets the European Convention on Human Rights and not EU law, it has histori- cally had a strong impact on how human rights are interpreted within the EU context. The rights in question – the right to liberty, prohibition of torture and inhuman/degrading treatment – also appear in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which sets mandatory standards for EU organs and member states. This means that the Euro- pean Commission will have to follow the ECHR’s assessment and will have no other choice than concluding that the policy of massive push-backs to Serbia and the indiscriminate arbitrary deten- tion of asylum-seekers broke EU law.