On Wednesday 8 March, it was the turn of the European Commissioner responsible for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, to react to the situation in Hungary and the government's decision to return to systematic detention for all asylum seekers. The subject was discussed at the meeting of the College of European Commissioners on Wednesday morning, and it was decided that Avramopoulos would travel to Budapest in the near future to have a serious chat with the authorities of the country, the Commission announced.
Hungary had put an end to this practice in 2013. Today, it stresses that the matter at hand is not a detention law, but a law that will guarantee that all asylum procedures are handled on the border, in the transit zones, and that housing infrastructure is made available to host asylum seekers.
The law was adopted on 7 March and will apply to new arrivals, but also to asylum seekers already in the country. The law provides that migrants will be placed in "transit zones" on the Serbian and Croatian borders, where they will be held pending a definitive decision on their dossiers. Otherwise, they may decide to return to their country of origin.
On behalf of his group, the chair of the Socialists and Democrats at the European Parliament, Gianni Pittella, slammed the law as “inhumane and shameful in equal measure”.
The Council of Europe has also spoken out against the law and expressed its grave concern. Tineke Strik, rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on monitoring the human rights of refugees and migrants, stressed that the “European Court of Human Rights has reminded Hungary several times in recent years that article five of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees refugees and migrants a right to protection against any arbitrary interference in their right to liberty. Article five includes an exhaustive list of the reasons for which a person may be deprived of his or her liberty in a regular decision proportionate to each situation. The automatic detention of asylum seekers clearly constitutes a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights”, Strik said (our translation). (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)