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Name of the act/s* |
Judgment in Joined Cases C-924/19 PPU and C-925/19 PPU FMS and Others v Országos Idegenrendeszeti Főigazgatóság Dél-alföldi Regionális Igazgatóság and Országos Idegenrendeszeti Főigazgatóság |
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Subject area |
refugee law, asylum |
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Brief description of the contents of the act |
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in the joint cases concerning two asylum-seeking families held in the transit zone in Röszke, at the Hungarian-Serbian border. The cases originate in preliminary ruling requests lodged by Hungarian judges in December 2019. The Hungarian judges asked the CJEU to rule on whether placement in the country’s two land-border transit zones constitutes detention, among other questions. The Court first held that detaining the persons concerned in that transit zone must be regarded as a detention measure. According to the Court, the conditions prevailing in the Röszke transit zone amount to a deprivation of liberty, inter alia because the persons concerned cannot lawfully leave that zone of their own free will in any direction whatsoever. In particular, they may not leave that zone for Serbia since such an attempt (i) would be considered unlawful by the Serbian authorities and would therefore expose them to penalties and (ii) might result in their losing any chance of obtaining refugee status in Hungary. The Court held that neither an applicant for international protection nor a third-country national who is the subject of a return decision may be detained solely on the ground that he or she cannot meet his or her own needs. The Court added that EU law precludes an applicant for international protection or a third-country national who is the subject of a return decision from being detained without the prior adoption of a reasoned decision ordering that detention and without the need for and proportionality of such a measure having been examined. Lastly, the Court held that the lawfulness of a detention measure, such as the detention of a person in a transit zone, must be amenable to judicial review. Moreover, if, following its review, the national court considers that the detention measure at issue is contrary to EU law, that court must be able to substitute its decision for that of the administrative authority which adopted the measure and order the immediate release of the persons concerned, or possibly an alternative measure to detention. |
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Secondary sources/ doctrinal works (if any) |
About the transit zone as an integral part of the Hungarian government’s refugee and asylum policy: Tóth, Judit: Hungary at the border of populism and asylum, in Sergio Carrera – Marco Stefan (eds.) Fundamental Rights Challenges in Border Controls and Expulsion of Irregular Immigrants in the European Union. Complaint Mechanisms and Access to Justice (Routledge, 2020) Nagy, Boldizsár: From Reluctance to Total Denial. Asylum Policy in Hungary 2015–2018, in Vladislava Stoyanova – Eleni Karageorgiou (eds.) The New Asylum and Transit Countries in Europe during and in the Aftermath of the 2015/2016 Crisis (Brill, 2019) Bernát, A. et al.: Borders and the Mobility of Migrants in Hungary, Ceaseval Research on the Common European Asylum System, 29 (2019) http://ceaseval.eu/publications/29_WP4_Hungary.pdf Witold Klaus et al.: Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Central European Countries. Reality, Politics and the Creation of Fear in Societies, in Helmut Kury – Slawomir Redo (eds.) Refugees and Migrants in Law and Policy Challenges and Opportunities for Global Civic Education (Springer, 2018) |
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*Act citation /year and number |
Judgment in Joined Cases C-924/19 PPU and C-925/19 PPU FMS and Others v Országos Idegenrendeszeti Főigazgatóság Dél-alföldi Regionális Igazgatóság and Országos Idegenrendeszeti Főigazgatóság |
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Enacted by |
Court of Justice of the European Union |
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Official link to the text of the act |