Justice minister: “Fortress Hungary is still standing”

The European Court of Justice and the European Commission’s ruling on the “Stop Soros” law package aims to get Hungary let in migrants, but their efforts failed as “Fortress Hungary is still standing”, Hungary’s justice minister told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The ECJ’s Tuesday ruling, namely that Hungary’s criminalisation of help given to people in making their claim for asylum breaches EU law, is “totally baffling”, Judit Varga said in an interview published in the Saturday issue of the paper.

“They are attacking the law which is meant to protect Europe from illegal migration and from unlawful support for migration,” she said.

EU court: Hungary breaking EU law by criminalising help for asylum seekers

While the EU’s migration system is dysfunctional, Hungary used to have a “smoothly operating legal framework”, involving transit zones that were open to safe third countries and closed to the Schengen region and “thus contributed to curbing illegal migration to Europe as a whole,” Varga said.

As the transit zones had to be closed, all rejected asylum-seekers who could not be returned home remained in Hungary, a situation that “runs counter to the principle of sovereignty laid down in the Basic Law”, she said.

“Nevertheless, we are not letting migrants in; Fortress Hungary is still standing,” the minister said.