Hungary appeals Strasbourg court’s ruling on Bangladeshi asylum seekers

Hungary has appealed a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ordering the state to compensate two Bangladeshi asylum seekers for wrongly detaining and deporting them in 2015, a justice ministry official said on Wednesday.

In a ruling issued in March, the ECtHR said that Hungary had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by detaining the two asylum seekers in the Röszke transit zone near Hungary’s southern border. The court also said that authorities later sent them back to Serbia, which the ECtHR said had put them under the risk of facing inhumane treatment in the Greek refugee reception centres.

The Hungarian government is of the view that this interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights could trigger a form of “business migration” to Europe, justice ministry state secretary Pál Völner told a press conference. He said rulings like the one in question could also “tear down the Schengen system” and generate “business human rights protection”.