(VOVWORLD) - The European Court of Justice on Thursday fined Hungary 200 million euros for breaking the EU’s asylum laws and ignoring an earlier judgment.
 A Hungarian soldier guards Hungaria's southern border with Serbia. (Photo: AFP/VNA) |
Hungary will be fined an additional 1million euros per day that it fails to comply with the court’s judgment, starting Thursday.
The court first ruled in December 2020 that Hungary had failed to comply with the bloc’s rules on the treatment of migrants by “unlawfully detaining” asylum seekers and deporting them before they could appeal the rejection of their applications.
Hungary ignored the judgment, which the ECJ described in a statement on Thursday as “deliberately evading the application of the EU common policy.” Budapest’s inaction “constitutes an unprecedented and exceptionally serious breach of EU law,” the court said.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán lashed out at Thursday’s judgment, calling it “outrageous and unacceptable” in a post on X. "It seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens", he added.