On Monday morning, Hungary filed a lawsuit with the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in connection with the verdict that condemns the country in the matter of migration. According to the MTI agency, this was announced on Monday by the Minister of Justice, Bence Tuzson, the TASR correspondent in Budapest reports.
The head of the department declared that nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the EU. According to him, a judgment was issued in 2020 in which Hungary was condemned for operating transit zones along the borders where arriving migrants had to wait. Hungary later changed this rule so that if someone wants to enter the country, they must first apply at the Hungarian embassy in one of the neighboring countries.
Fines from the EU
“These regulations were challenged in order to force Hungary to change its migration policy, and the EC turned to the CJEU with a request to impose a fine on Hungary,” the minister said.
As he added, the result of the court proceedings was that Hungary was awarded an unprecedented fine in the history of the EU in the amount of one million euros per day and a one-time sum of 200 million euros. These funds will be deducted from EU payments to Hungary.
Court decisions
He also reminded that the EC would have demanded a much smaller amount from Hungary, but the court set 29 times this lump sum and 61 times the daily fine. Since it is a valid court judgment, Hungary is not contesting it, but is filing a lawsuit with a request for damages, Tuzson specified.
In mid-June last year, the CJEU awarded Hungary a flat-rate fine of 200 million euros and one million euros for each day of delay for failing to implement a decision in 2020 on compliance with international procedures for asylum seekers.
Ignoring payments
Hungary failed to meet the first deadline for paying the fine at the end of August, which forced the EU executive to send a second payment request with a deadline of September 17. However, the Hungarian government also ignored it.
The EC has therefore activated the so-called “compensation procedure” against Budapest, and the amount of the fine will be deducted from the European funds allocated to Hungary.
Since the ECJ ruling, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has stepped up his anti-EU rhetoric. He described the imposed fine as outrageous and claimed that his country should receive two billion euros for protecting its borders from 2015.
