HUNGARY: ‘Humiliating’ Portfolio for Hungarian Commissioner-designate Reflects Country’s Marginalisation Within EU, Opposition Says ― ECtHR Rules Against Hungarian State in Transit Zone Case ― EU Triggers ‘Offsetting Procedure’ to Recoup  €200 Million …

• European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen has allocated the health and animal welfare portfolio to Hungary’s Commissioner-designate Oliver Várhelyi in a move that the Hungarian opposition has described as ‘humiliating’ and a sign of Hungary’s increasing marginalisation within the EU.
• The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled against the Hungarian state in another transit zone case.
• The EU has triggered a special procedure to recoup the unpaid €200 million fine that the European Court of Justice of the EU imposed on Hungary over its ‘unprecedented and exceptionally serious breach’ of EU asylum law.
• A senior minister has reported that Hungary is ‘ready to file a lawsuit against the Commission’ to reimburse the costs it has incurred in ‘protecting the EU’s borders’.
• The EC has declared that it is ‘standing ready to use all our powers under the treaty’ to thwart the Hungarian government’s threat to bus people seeking asylum in Hungary to Brussels.
• Minister for European Union Affairs Bóka János has announced that Hungary will join the Netherlands in requesting an opt-out from EU asylum and migration rules.

On 17 September, European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen allocated the health and animal welfare portfolio to Hungary’s Commissioner-designate Oliver Várhelyi. The Hungarian opposition has described the move as “humiliating” and a sign of an increasingly marginalised Hungary in the EU. Várhelyi is currently Commissioner for  Enlargement and Neighbourhood so the new role is widely seen as a demotion. “This is where [Hungarian Prime Minister] Orbán and his party have led Hungary. Zero influence. A laughing stock,” opposition member of the European Parliament Csaba Molnár posted on Facebook. “The Hungarian commissioner will be given the post that is the least important. Such a post did not even exist before, it is being created specifically for the purpose of humiliating the Orbán family,” he added.

Also on 17 September, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled against Hungary in another transit zone case. A mother and her four children who were seeking asylum in the country were unlawfully detained in inhuman conditions for 17 months. ECRE member organisation the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) represented the applicants before the ECtHR, the fourteenth time that the organisation has been successful in ECtHR cases of unlawful and inhuman transit zone detention of families with children seeking asylum in Hungary. “Of course, we are happy about the new judgment, but we also see that even today, Hungary often fails to guarantee adequate treatment to refugee and asylum-seeking children,” said HHC lawyer Barbara Pohárnok who represented the family.

On 18 September, the EU triggered a special procedure to recoup the €200 million fine (subject to an additional €1 million for every day of non-compliance) that the Court of Justice of the EU imposed on Hungary in June 2024 over its “unprecedented and exceptionally serious breach” of EU asylum law. Hungary has publicly refused to pay the fine and has subsequently missed two payment deadlines: the first in late August a second on 17 September. As a result, the EC has activated an “offsetting procedure”. “So, what we are going to do now is to deduct the €200 million from upcoming payments from the EU budget towards Hungary,” stated EC Spokesperson Balazs Ujvari. A day after the EU triggered the offsetting procedure, Hungarian Minister of State for International Communication and Relations Zoltán Kovács X posted that Hungary had “begun negotiations to address the EU court’s migration ruling, aiming to resolve the situation without paying the fines”. Citing Minister for European Union Affairs Bóka János, Kovács wrote that “Hungary’s goal is to stop the daily € 1 million fine while resolving the issue” and that the two sides had “agreed on the channels for ongoing discussions and set a clear timetable for further negotiations”.

Elsewhere, the Hungarian government has stated it is “ready to file a lawsuit against the Commission” to reimburse the costs of “protecting” the EU’s borders. On 12 September, Minister in charge of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás argued that Hungary should get a partial reimbursement from the EU as it had “spent €2 billion on [border control] without any relevant financial assistance” while other countries had “received financial aid for the protection of the Schengen border”. The announcement about a possible lawsuit comes a week after Hungary accused the EU of refusing to provide it with financial assistance to support its migration management efforts. Responding to the accusation, an EU spokesperson noted that Hungary had received “nearly double” the amount of funding in the 2021-2027 EU long-term budget compared to the previous period, and that “Hungary, moreover, received emergency assistance from the home affairs fund to provide support to people fleeing the Russian war in Ukraine through direct management”.

Finally, on 10 September, the EC announced that it was “standing ready to use all our powers under the treaty to ensure that the EU law is respected” in order to thwart the Hungarian government’s threat to bus people who were seeking asylum in Hungary to Brussels. On 30 August, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán threatened to send people “with a one-way ticket” to Brussels and Deputy Minister of the Interior Bence Rétvári even went as far as holding a press conference to show off the buses that would be used to implement the measure. “If Brussels wants illegal migrants, Brussels can have them,” Rétvári said. Several Belgian officials, including Minister for Foreign Affairs Hadja Lahbib, State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor and Mayor of Brussels Philippe Clos have all condemned Hungary’s plan, calling it a provocation that “contradicts European obligations” and that “undermines solidarity and co-operation within the Union”.

On 19 September, Minister for European Union Affairs Bóka János X posted that the Hungarian government would “join the Netherlands in asking for an opt-out from EU asylum and migration rules if a Treaty amendment allows it”.

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