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2019 |
Osservatorio sulle fonti / Observatory on Sources of Law ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Section: Sources of Law in the EU member States HUNGARY By Viktor Zoltán Kazai, Central European University, Budapest |
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Name of the Act/s |
Judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Ilias and Ahmed v. Hungary [GC], Appl. no. 47287/15 |
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Date of Text (Adopted) |
21 November 2019 |
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Type of text (name in English / name in the official language) |
Judgment of the European Court of Human Rights |
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Enacted by |
European Court of Human Rights |
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Subject area |
Prohibition of torture, Rights of refugees and asylum-seekers |
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Comment |
The applicants, Mr. Ilias and Mr. Ahmed, are two Bangladeshi nationals who arrived in Hungary from Serbia in 2015 and entered the so-called ‘transit zone’, situated on Hungarian territory at the border between the two countries. The applicants’ asylum requests were rejected by the Hungarian immigration office based on a government decree which qualified Serbia as a “safe third country”. Consequently, the applicants were escorted out of the transit zone and then entered Serbia. In 2017, in a chamber judgment, the European Court of Human Rights found violations of Articles 3, 5 and 13 of the Convention, arguing that the applicants’ detention in the transit zone constituted de facto deprivation of liberty with no adequate safeguards, there was no effective remedy with respect to the conditions of their detention and they were sent back to Serbia based on a legislative presumption that it was a “safe third country”. The Grand Chamber has partly reversed the previous judgment. It concluded that the applicants’ detention in the transit zone did not constitute a deprivation of liberty with no adequate safeguards because they were allowed to leave voluntarily in the direction of Serbia. The fact that Serbia was not considered to be a “safe third country” by the United Nations was deemed irrelevant by the justices. However, the Court concluded that the Hungarian authorities failed to assess the risk of denial of access to asylum proceedings in a presumed safe third country. Consequently, the Grand Chamber found a violation of Article 3 only with respect to the applicants’ expulsion. |
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Secondary sources/ doctrinal works (if any) |
For the latest news and analyses of the refugee system in Hungary, see materials of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee: https://www.helsinki.hu/en/refugees_and_migrants/monitoring/ It is worth noting that in October 2019, Advocate General Shaprston delivered her opinion in the joint cases C-715/17 Commission v Poland, C-718/17 Commission v Hungary and C-719/17 Commission v Czech Republic concerning the three Member States’ refusal to comply with the Council of the European Union’s decisions on the provisional and time-limited mechanism for the mandatory relocation of applicants for international protection (Relocation Decisions). AG Sharpston argues that the Court of Justice of the EU should rule that the three Member States have failed to fulfil their obligations under EU law. The press release is available at: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-10/cp190133en.pdf For an analysis of the Chamber judgment, see Kilibarda, Pavle: The ECtHR’s Ilias and Ahmed v. Hungary and Why It Matters, EJIL:Talk!,March 20, 2017, https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-ecthrs-ilias-and-ahmed-v-hungary-and-why-it-matters/ |
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Available Text |
- Viktor Zoltán Kazai
- Hungary