Hungarian Law Forcing Migrants to Seek Asylum Abroad Is Illegal, Top EU Court Rules

The EU’s top court has once again reprimanded Hungary over its migration policy.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled Thursday that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s push to outsource asylum applications to the Hungarian embassies in Belgrade and Kyiv is a breach of EU law.

The law, which effectively limited migrant flows to Hungary, requires foreign nationals to submit a pre-asylum application at the country’s mission to Serbia or Ukraine before applying for international protection in Hungary. It means asylum candidates already present in Hungary must travel abroad to file their request. {snip}

In their ruling on Thursday, EU judges wrote that the law amounts to “a disproportionate interference with the right of those persons to make an application for international protection upon their arrival at a Hungarian border.”

The court also argued that Hungary had violated the bloc’s international protection rules, which do not allow an individual to leave an EU country to file an asylum application abroad. {snip}

{snip}

The asylum policy has been a key plank of Orbán’s anti-migration platform, leading to only 44 people applying for international protection in Hungary in 2022. The European Commission, the EU’s executive, denounced the law and referred the issue to the EU’s court in Luxembourg.

{snip}