The Council of Europe's (COE) Commissioner for Human Rights issued her first conclusions on Monday 11 February after a mission to Hungary last week.
Dunja Mijatović denounced the negative impact of recent legislative measures that have severely restricted “the space reserved for the work of NGOs, human rights defenders and journalists critical of the government".
"In Hungary, asylum seekers cannot exercise their right to seek refugee protection guaranteed by national and European law", added Ms Mijatović In this sense, it calls on the Hungarian government to open "access to a regular asylum procedure" and to end the detention of asylum seekers in transit areas near borders, while urging the country's authorities to "refrain from using anti-migration rhetoric and campaigns that fuel xenophobic reactions among the population".
The issue of violence against women and gender equality in Hungary is also of concern to the Commissioner, who is asking Budapest to ratify the Istanbul Convention, a specific COE legal instrument.
Another area of concern is the new system of administrative courts to adjudicate cases involving public authorities and their relationship with the executive, which will have a wide range of powers to set it up and manage it. Autonomy must be restored “as a guarantee of the independence of the judiciary", concluded the Commissioner for Human Rights. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)