BRUSSELS
\nThe European Union on Wednesday began the process of clawing back hundreds of millions of euros in funds meant to go Hungary after its ant-migrant government refused to pay a huge fine for breaking the bloc\u2019s asylum rules.
\nIn June, the EU\u2019s top court ordered Hungary to pay 200 million euros ($223 million) for persistently depriving migrants of their right to apply for asylum. The court imposed an additional fine of 1 million euros for every day it failed to comply.
\nThe European Court of Justice described Hungary\u2019s actions as \u201can unprecedented and extremely serious infringement of EU law.\u201d Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n slammed its ruling as \u201coutrageous and unacceptable.\u201d
\nThe EU\u2019s executive branch, the European Commission, said that given Hungary\u2019s failure to pay or provide information about its intentions, Brussels is \u201cmoving to what we call the off-setting procedure\u201d by taking the money from common funds that would otherwise go to Budapest.
\n\u201cSo, what we are going to do now is to deduct the 200 million euro from upcoming payments from the EU budget toward Hungary,\u201d commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari said. He said it would take time to identify which parts of Hungary\u2019s funding could be deducted.
\nUjvari said the commission has also sent a first payment request on the daily fines amounting to 93 million euros ($103 million) so far. \u201cCounting from receipt, the Hungarian authorities will have 45 days to make that payment,\u201d he said.
\nHungary\u2019s staunchly nationalist government has taken a hard line on people entering the country since well over 1 million people arrived in Europe in 2015, most of them fleeing conflict in Syria.
\nThe case against it concerned changes Hungary made to its asylum system in the wake of that crisis, when some 400,000 people passed through Hungary on their way to Western Europe.
\nThe government in Budapest ordered fences with razor wire to be erected on its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia and a pair of transit zones for holding asylum seekers to be set up on its border with Serbia. Those transit zones have since closed.
\nIn 2020, the ECJ found that Hungary had restricted access to international protection, unlawfully detained asylum applicants, and failed to observe their right to stay while their applications were processed.
\nThe transit zones were closed in 2020, shortly after that ruling.
\nBut the commission, which is responsible for monitoring the 27 EU member states\u2019 compliance with their shared laws, took the view that Budapest had still not complied and requested that the ECJ impose a fine.
\nAfter the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020, the government also pushed through a law forcing asylum seekers to travel to Belgrade or Kyiv to apply for a travel permit at its embassies there before entering Hungary. Only once back could they file their applications.
\nPeople have the right to apply for asylum or other forms of international protection if they fear for their safety in their home countries or face the prospect of persecution based on their race, religion, ethnic background, gender or other discrimination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSELS The European Union on Wednesday began the process of clawing back hundreds of millions of euros in funds meant to go Hungary after its ant-migrant government refused to pay a huge fine for breaking the bloc\u2019s asylum rules. In June, the EU\u2019s top court ordered Hungary to pay 200 million euros ($223 million) for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-432035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n