On Tuesday 14 March, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Hungary for having detained two men from Bangladesh in September 2015 in the transit zone at its border with Serbia.
These two men applied for asylum when they arrived in Hungary. After having been retained for 23 days, they were deported to Serbia because the Hungarian authorities considered the latter a safe country.
The Court argues that this detention on premises to which their lawyer was denied access was not only a “denial of freedom” but was done in contravention of their rights because they had no right of appeal.
Hungarian proceedings did not provide “The necessary protection against the real risk of exposure to inhumane and degrading treatment” either. It also exposed the two men to “A real risk of refoulement and them subsequently being sent back to Greece where they would have been retained in inhumane and degrading conditions”. The Court also found fault with Budapest’s inclusion of Serbia on the list of “safe countries”.
This ruling by the ECHR has been made at the very moment that Hungary has decided to detain all migrants arriving on its soil in cross-border transit zones. This decision also raised a number of questions at the European Commission last week (see EUROPE 11741). (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)