The arrangement effectively replaced imprisonment with release, expulsion and a temporary ban on returning to Hungary.
The Luxembourg-based court upheld the European Commission’s action against Hungary, finding that the regulations failed to provide the effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties required by EU law.
A government decree adopted in 2023 automatically converted sentences for people-smuggling offenses or preparations for such offenses into special reintegration detention. Those released were required to leave Hungary within 72 hours and were prohibited from returning for the remainder of their sentences.
The decree was repealed on Aug. 19, 2025, but 2,525 people were placed in special reintegration detention while it was in force.
The Commission argued that the regulation created a systemic risk that crimes facilitating illegal immigration would go unpunished, jeopardizing the effectiveness of EU immigration and border control policy.
The court found that special reintegration detention could not be considered an effective penalty because final prison sentences were not carried out, but replaced by expulsion and a temporary entry ban.
The measure also lacked a dissuasive effect, the court said, because people smugglers could expect that, if caught and convicted in Hungary, they would at most be expelled and temporarily barred from returning.
The court further found the arrangement disproportionate because release was automatic, “without any individual assessment of the circumstances of the offence or of the character of the person who committed it.”
It also ruled that Hungary had failed to meet its EU obligations because the decree could apply to serious offenses for which EU law requires a prison sentence of at least eight years.
Eszter Lakos, leader of the ruling Tisza Party’s European Parliament delegation, said the previous government “now has it in writing that it aided illegal migration rather than cracking down on people-smuggling.”
She said the judgment highlighted “Fidesz’s hypocrisy of posing as the champions of the fight against illegal migration at home and abroad while releasing more than 2,500 people-smugglers who were given binding prison sentences by Hungarian courts.”
Lakos said the releases “not only perpetuated the problems across the EU, but also sent them the message that they could carry on their activities undisturbed,” because the worst consequence would be temporary expulsion from Hungary.
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