“Hungary is appealing the March ruling of the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights concerning two asylum seekers from Bangladesh”, the Ministry of Justice’s Parliamentary State Secretary informed Hungarian news agency MTI.
Pál Völner said: “The Ministry’s standpoint is that irrespective of the details of the concrete case, a fundamental and general problem with the initial ruling of the Court is that the resulting legal practice could lead to an even greater wave of global migration towards Europe, and the huge numbers of economic immigrants would undermine the Schengen Agreement and the European states’ asylum institutions, in addition to increasing the threat of terrorism”.
“In addition, with regard to the concrete case, the parts of the ruling stating that transit zones are equivalent to detention and that Serbia is not a safe third country may both be contested”, he added. “The facts that those involved did not mention concrete persecution to the Hungarian authorities and that one of George Soros’s organisations, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee took up the case, while the alleged asylum seekers have long since disappeared, also raise concerns”, the State Secretary said in the statement.
Mr. Völner explained that the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg Court only accepts a very small proportion of appeals, and that based on previous practices a decision on whether the Hungarian appeal may be accepted for consideration is expected to be issued before the end of this year, but could even occur within a few weeks. Even with regard to cases that are examined, there is only a chance of the initial ruling being changed if the case concerns a problem of global significance or affects the essence of the treaty that served as a basis for the Court’s original ruling.
“According to the leaders and experts of the Ministry of Justice, this is just such a case”, the Ministry’s State Secretary added.
According to the March ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the Hungarian authorities held two asylum seekers from Bangladesh in detention at the transit zone in Röszke in the autumn of 2015 in a violation of the Convention on Human Rights, while sending them back to Serbia involved the risk that they would have to endure inhumane conditions in Greek receiving centres.
According to the Court, Hungary violated the Convention on Human Rights with relation to the right to liberty and security, the ban on torture and the right to effective legal redress. According to the Court’s ruling of first instance, the Hungarian State must pay the two asylum seekers some twenty thousand euros in damages, in addition to legal costs.