The European Court of Justice on Thursday fined Hungary €200 million for breaking the EU’s asylum laws and ignoring an earlier judgment.
The Luxembourg court first ruled in December 2020 that Hungary had failed to comply with the bloc’s rules on the treatment of migrants by “unlawfully detaining” asylum seekers and deporting them before they could appeal the rejection of their applications, ordering Budapest to make changes to its policies.
Hungary ignored the judgment, which the ECJ described in a statement on Thursday as “deliberately evading the application of the EU common policy.”
Budapest’s inaction “constitutes an unprecedented and exceptionally serious breach of EU law,” the court said.
Along with the €200 million fine, Hungary will be fined an additional €1 million per day that it fails to comply with the court’s judgment. If Budapest refuses to pay the fines, they can be deducted from its share of the EU budget, as was the case with Poland.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán lashed out at Thursday’s judgment, calling it “outrageous and unacceptable” in a post on X.
“It seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens,” he added.
Hungary has taken a hard line on asylum seekers entering the country, with Orbán’s government passing a law in 2020 forcing migrants to first apply for protection at embassies outside its borders.
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