Hungary: Government’s New Asylum Bill on Collective Push-backs and Automatic Detention

Aus der Stellungnahme des ungarischen Helsinki Komitees:

The most concerning changes include:

  • The grounds on which the Government may order a ‘state of crisis due to mass migration’ are extended to include vaguely defined requirements [Bill, Article 6].
  • The Government plans to extend the existing state of crisis by a further 6 months, it has announced, until 7 September 2017.
  • If any foreigner who has no right to stay in Hungary is apprehended anywhere in the country, s/he shall be “escorted” back by the police to the external side of the border fence along the southern border. Migrants affected by this push-back measure will not be given access to seek asylum or to challenge their removal from the country, an action that makes the otherwise prohibited collective expulsion the norm, and breaches the EU Returns Directive. No registration or individual documentation of persons “escorted” back across the fence is carried out, neither are their protection needs assessed [Bill, Article 7].
  • Asylum applications can only be submitted in person within the transit zones [Bill, Article 7]. This proposal is especially problematic and worrying as since 23 January 2017 the number of admitted asylum seekers to each of the now operational two transit zones along the Serbian border has been reduced to 5-5 persons per working day.
  • All those who are accomodated at open reception facilities or detained in asylum or immigration detention facilities at the time the bill enters into force will be transferred to the transit zones [Bill, Articles 3, 4 and 9].
  • All asylum-seekers, including all vulnerable persons and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children over 14 years of age, will be detained in the transit zones [Bill, Articles 4, 7 and 9]. The detention of unaccompanied minor children between the age of 14-18 years is clearly against the best interest of the child and breaches human rights and EU law.
  • The placement of asylum-seekers in the transit zones is “effectively detention”, as even the Government admits it in the reasoning of the Bill [General reasoning, para. 4]. However, no detention order would be issued and consequently no legal remedy would be available against the detention. The current maximum 28 days of stay in the transit zone would be eliminated, rendering the de facto detention of asylum seekers indefinite [Bill, Article 12].
  • The deadline to seek judicial review of inadmissibility decisions and rejections of asylum applications would be drastically shortened to 3 days, hindering the applicant’s ability to challenge these decisions in court [Bill, Article 7].
  • Judicial clerks, who are not appointed fully qualified judges, would also be involved in making court decisions in the asylum procedure [Bill, Article 6].
  • Personal interviews in the judicial review of asylum decisions could be carried out remotely via telecommunication devices [Bill, Article 6].
  • Asylum seekers in the transit zones would be obliged to cover the costs of their detention unless they are granted protection status [Bill, Article 3].