Hungary

The Court considers that, in these circumstances, the applicant may be regarded as no longer wishing to pursue his application, within the meaning of Article 37 § 1 (a) of the Convention. Furthermore, in accordance with Article 37 § 1 in fine, the Court finds no special circumstances regarding respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and its Protocols which require the continued examination of the case. In view of the above, it is appropriate to strike the case out of the list and to discontinue the application of Rule 39 of the Rules of Court. For these reasons, the Court, unanimously, Decides to strike the application out of its list of cases.

16 November 2021 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Topic(s): Illegal entry - Immigration Detention - Unaccompanied / Separated children | Countries: Afghanistan - Hungary

The Court: Decides to join to the merits the respondent Government’s objection concerning the applicant’s victim status, and dismisses it; Declares the application admissible; Holds that there has been a violation of Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention; Holds that there has been a violation of Article 13 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention; Holds (a) that the respondent State is to pay the applicant, within three months from the date on which the judgment becomes final in accordance with Article 44 § 2 of the Convention, the following amounts, to be converted into the currency of the respondent State at the rate applicable at the date of settlement: (i) EUR 5,000 (five thousand euros), plus any tax that may be chargeable, in respect of non-pecuniary damage; (ii) EUR 5,000 (five thousand euros), plus any tax that may be chargeable to the applicant, in respect of costs and expenses; (b) that from the expiry of the above-mentioned three months until settlement simple interest shall be payable on the above amounts at a rate equal to the marginal lending rate of the European Central Bank during the default period plus three percentage points; Dismisses the remainder of the applicant’s claim for just satisfaction.

8 July 2021 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Topic(s): Safe third country | Countries: Hungary - Pakistan

The case concerned the applicants’ confinement in the Röszke transit zone on the border with Serbia in April-August 2017. The Court found, in particular, that the lack of food provided to R.R. and the conditions of stay of the other applicants (a pregnant woman and children) had led to a violation of Article 3. It also found that that the applicants’ stay in the transit zone had amounted to a de facto deprivation of liberty and that the absence of any formal decision of the authorities and any proceedings by which the lawfulness of their detention could have been decided speedily by a court had led to violations of Article 5.

2 March 2021 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Topic(s): Immigration Detention | Countries: Hungary

Hungary has failed to fulfil its obligations: – in providing that applications for international protection from third-country nationals or stateless persons who, arriving from Serbia, wish to access, in its territory, the international protection procedure, may be made only in the transit zones of Röszke and Tompa, while adopting a consistent and generalised administrative practice drastically limiting the number of applicants authorised to enter those transit zones daily; – in establishing a system of systematic detention of applicants for international protection in the transit zones of Röszke and Tompa, without observing the guarantees provided for in Article 24(3) and Article 43 of Directive 2013/32 and Articles 8, 9 and 11 of Directive 2013/33; – in allowing the removal of all third-country nationals staying illegally in its territory, with the exception of those of them who are suspected of having committed a criminal offence, without observing the procedures and safeguards laid down in Article 5, Article 6(1), Article 12(1) and Article 13(1) of Directive 2008/115; – in making the exercise by applicants for international protection who fall within the scope of Article 46(5) of Directive 2013/32 of their right to remain in its territory subject to conditions contrary to EU law.

17 December 2020 | Judicial Body: European Union: Court of Justice of the European Union | Topic(s): Access to procedures - Illegal entry - Immigration Detention | Countries: Hungary

The case concerned a transgender man from Iran who had obtained asylum in Hungary but could not legally change his gender and name in that country. The Court noted that the domestic system for gender recognition had excluded the applicant simply because he did not have a birth certificate from Hungary, a change in the birth register being the way name and gender changes were legally recognised. The Court concluded that a fair balance had not been struck between the public interest and the applicant’s right to respect for his private life owing to the refusal to give him access to the legal gender recognition procedure.

16 July 2020 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Legal Instrument: 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) | Topic(s): Birth Certificates - Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) - Persecution on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity - Right to family life | Countries: Hungary - Iran, Islamic Republic of

Commission sought a declaration from the Court that, by failing to indicate at regular intervals, and at least every three months, an appropriate number of applicants for international protection who could be relocated swiftly to its territory, the republic of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic failed to fulfil its obligations

2 April 2020 | Judicial Body: European Union: Court of Justice of the European Union | Topic(s): Admission quotas - Burden-sharing and international co-operation - Resettlement | Countries: Czech Republic - Greece - Hungary - Italy - Poland

The Court found in particular that the Hungarian authorities had failed in their duty under Article 3 to assess the risks of the applicants not having proper access to asylum proceedings in Serbia or being subjected to chain-refoulement, which could have seen them being sent to Greece, where conditions in refugee camps had already been found to be in violation of Article 3. In a development of its case-law, it held that Article 5 was not applicable to the applicants’ case as there had been no de facto deprivation of liberty in the transit zone. Among other things, the Court found that the applicants had entered the transit zone of their own initiative and it had been possible in practice for them to return to Serbia, where they had not faced any danger to their life or health. Their fears of a lack of access to Serbia’s asylum system or of refoulement to Greece, as expressed under Article 3, had not been enough to make their stay in the transit zone involuntary.

21 November 2019 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Topic(s): Expulsion - Freedom from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment - Rejection at border - Right to liberty and security - Safe third country - Transit | Countries: Bangladesh - Greece - Hungary - North Macedonia - Serbia - Türkiye

The case concerned media access to reception facilities for asylum-seekers. The applicant in the case, a journalist for an Internet news portal, complained about the authorities’ refusal of his request to carry out interviews and take photographs at the Debrecen Reception Centre, thus preventing him from reporting on the living conditions there. The Court stressed that research work was an essential part of press freedom and had to be protected. It was not convinced that restricting the applicant’s ability to carry out such research work, which had prevented him from reporting first-hand on a matter of considerable public interest, namely the refugee crisis in Hungary, had been sufficiently justified. In particular, the authorities had only given summary reasons, namely possible problems for the safety and private lives of asylum-seekers, for their refusal, without any real weighing up of the interests at stake.

8 October 2019 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Legal Instrument: 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) | Topic(s): Freedom of expression | Countries: Hungary

Article 46(3) of Directive 2013/32/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 on common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection, read in conjunction with Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, must be interpreted as meaning that, in circumstances, such as those at issue in the main proceedings, where a first-instance court or tribunal has found — after making a full and ex nunc examination of all the relevant elements of fact and law submitted by an applicant for international protection — that, under the criteria laid down by Directive 2011/95/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on standards for the qualification of third-country nationals or stateless persons as beneficiaries of international protection, for a uniform status for refugees or for persons eligible for subsidiary protection and for the content of the protection granted, that applicant must be granted such protection on the ground that he or she relied on in support of his or her application, but after which the administrative or quasi-judicial body adopts a contrary decision without establishing that new elements have arisen that justify a new assessment of the international protection needs of the applicant, that court or tribunal must vary that decision which does not comply with its previous judgment and substitute its own decision for it as to the application for international protection, disapplying as necessary the national law that would prohibit it from proceeding in that way.

29 July 2019 | Judicial Body: European Union: Court of Justice of the European Union | Topic(s): Administrative law - Effective remedy | Countries: Hungary - Russian Federation

I suggest that the Court reply to the Pécsi Közigazgatási és Munkaügyi Bíróság (Administrative and Labour Court, Pécs, Hungary) as follows: – Article 46(3) of Directive 2013/32/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 on common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection, in conjunction with the first paragraph of Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, is to be interpreted as meaning that a model of judicial review in matters of international protection in which the courts are endowed with a mere cassational power but in which the judicial guidance they issue in their annulment decisions is effectively being disregarded by the administrative bodies when deciding on the same case again, such as demonstrated in the case in the main proceedings, fails to meet the requirements of effective judicial review set out in Article 46(3) of Directive 2013/32 and interpreted in the light of the first paragraph of Article 47 of the Charter. – A national court, deciding in circumstances such as those in the case in the main proceedings, must set aside the national rule limiting its power to the mere annulment of the relevant administrative decision. That obligation arises when the clear assessment contained in a judicial decision annulling a previous administrative decision has been disregarded by the administrative authority deciding the same case anew, without the latter bringing any new elements that it could have reasonably and legitimately brought into consideration, thus depriving the judicial protection provided for under the invoked provisions of any practical effect.

30 April 2019 | Judicial Body: European Union: Court of Justice of the European Union | Topic(s): Administrative courts - Effective remedy | Countries: Hungary - Russian Federation