CJEU Penalizes Hungary for Non-compliance

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The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on Thursday ordered Hungary to pay a lump sum of EUR 200 million and a penalty of EUR 1 mln per day of delay for failure to comply with an earlier ruling on asylum and return, according to a report by state news wire MTI.

The CJEU noted that it had ruled on December 17, 2020, that Hungary had failed to comply with EU rules on procedures for granting international protection and returning illegally staying third-country nationals.

"Hungary has not taken the measures necessary to comply with the 2020 judgment as regards access to the international protection procedure, the right of applicants for international protection to remain in Hungary pending a final decision on their appeal against the rejection of their application and the removal of illegally staying third-country nationals," the CJEU said.

"That failure, which consists in deliberately avoiding the application of a common EU policy as a whole, constitutes an unprecedented and extremely serious infringement of EU law," the court added.

At a regular press briefing later on Thursday, Gergely Gulyas, the head of the Prime Minister's Office, called the CJEU decision "outrageous, unfair, and unacceptable". The court's ruling "flies in the face of European Union law and is incompatible with the Hungarian constitution", he said, adding that it also ran counter to effective measures to protect the frontier and crack down on migration. A "normal court" would never have taken such a decision, he added.

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