Brussels expects Hungary to pay 200 million euros and lift long-standing restrictions on the right to asylum.
Hungary ha unfulfilled he first term to pay the fine of 200 million eurosimposed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (TWENTY)which has led Brussels to send a second demand for payment and has laid the foundations for an imminent head-on clash. The new deadline is he September 17.
If Budapest has not transferred the lump sum by then, the European Commissionwhich is obliged to ensure that Member States comply with the rulings of the CJEU, will launch the so-called “compensation procedure” and will deduct the €200 million from Hungary’s share of the EU budget, part of which still frozen due to the deterioration of the rule of law.
“Unprecedented and exceptionally serious infringement” of community law
“There is no room for maneuver. We have to follow the applicable procedures“, a Commission spokesperson said on Monday. In a ruling issued in June, the CJEU considered that Hungary had committed a “unprecedented and exceptionally serious breach of EU law“due to the restrictions that the country has long applied to the right to asylum.
The litigation dates back to December 2020, when the Court first said that Hungaryunder the mandate of the prime minister Viktor Orbánhad limited access to asylum procedures for applicants for international protection, making “practically impossible” to submit applications.
Las Hungarian authorities were reprimanded by illegally holding asylum seekers on calls “transit areas” in conditions similar to detention and for violating their right to appeal, although they have since been closed.
This “systematic” practice, the Court said then, also involved the Hungarian Police forcibly escorting third-country nationals who had arrived irregularly in Hungary to a “strip of land devoid of any infrastructure“, leaving them no choice but to go to Serbia.
Budapest there was hit strongly the charges and argued that migration pressure across the EU justified the exceptions, but the Court rejected this point.
As Hungary ignored the 2020 verdict, the European Commission undertook new legal actionswhich led to the June ruling. The judges concluded that Hungary was “disregarding the principle of sincere cooperation” and “deliberately evading” the application of the bloc’s asylum legislation, with ripple effects for neighboring member states.
“This conduct constitutes a serious threat to the unity of EU lawwhich has a extraordinarily serious impact both in private interests, in particular interests of asylum seekersas in the public interest,” the judges said.
Compensation procedure could be launched if Hungary does not give in
As a consequence of the infringement, the CJEU imposed a fine of 200 million euros as a single payment. Viktor Orbán called the court’s decision “scandalous and unacceptable“It seems that illegal immigrants are more important to Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens,” he said.
The Commission sent the first payment request on July 16, giving Hungary 45 calendar days to complete the transaction. The deadline ended last Friday and no money was transferred. This led the Commission to send a second payment request this Monday, with an additional period of 15 days to respond.
If Budapest does not give in, the Commission will launch the “compensation procedure” and “will identify upcoming payments to Hungary from the EU budget and we will deduct from there the amount in question,” a spokesperson explained.
On the other hand, the Executive is studying the fine of one million euros per day that the CJEU also imposed on Hungary and that increases every day that the Government continues to ignore the June ruling. Budapest has up to September 31 to explainwhat kind of measuresif applicable, has been introduced to lift restrictions on right of asylum.
Hungary is defiant
“Depending on the content from that answer, whether or not we will proceed with the payment request of the daily fine of one million euros,” the spokesperson added. Hungary is unlikely to give in anytime soon; in fact, it seems more than willing to turn the matter into a political confrontation in every rule.
Last month, Gergely Gulyás, a minister in the prime minister’s Cabinet, reaffirmed his government’s refusal to comply with the CJEU ruling and threatened to send migrants by bus to Belgian capitals as reprisal for the astronomical fine. “If Brussels wants immigrants, it will have them,” Gulyás said. “We will give everyone a one-way ticket if the EU makes it impossible to stop migration at the external border.”
