EU Court’s Penalty Seen as a Revenge Move by Brussels

Brussels is exerting strong political pressure on Hungary, demanding a change in its migration policy as a kind of political demand in a legal guise, Zoltán Lomnici Jr., legal advisor at the Századvég Foundation, told Magyar Nemzet. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ordered Hungary to pay EUR 200 million.

With this legal instrument, the power center of the EU is de facto trying to blackmail Hungary, especially by imposing a heavy fine; it is exerting strong political pressure on Hungary, as a kind of political demand in a legal guise, demanding that we change our migration policy, Zoltán Lomnici Jr. explained.

As Hungary Today reported, the CJEU has ordered Hungary to pay EUR 200 million for “non-compliance” with EU law,

including in the area of procedures for granting international protection and returning non-EU nationals residing illegally in the EU.

The #ECJ’s decision to fine #Hungary with 200M euros plus 1M euros daily(!!!) for defending the borders of the European Union is outrageous and unacceptable. It seems that illegal #migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens.

— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) June 13, 2024

According to Lomnici Jr., since the EU cannot accept the strong and unequivocal rejection of migration by the Hungarian government and people, Brussels will now force the Hungarian people to pay EUR 200 million plus EUR 1 million in fines for every day of delay, the expert emphasized.

The court argued that the Hungarian government was not complying with EU regulations and was violating EU law by setting up transit zones. As Lomnici Jr. emphasized, the court was in fact representing Brussels’ point of view and trying to force Hungary to accept migrants in the usual way of the leading bureaucrats of the EU institutions, by exceeding its powers and applying the law. The constitutional lawyer says they are doing this because

Hungary is unwilling to bow to Brussels’ decisions to release illegal migrants and create migrant ghettos in the country.

According to the constitutional lawyer, it makes no sense to talk about “restricting” access to the international protection procedure in transit zones that have not been in operation for a long time. As he added, it is also significant that the court did not take into account the proceedings initiated and still ongoing to ensure respect for the Fundamental Law of Hungary, and even assessed them as an aggravating circumstance.

Although, as a general rule, there is no right of appeal against the decision, it should be noted that in the present case, the most flagrant procedural irregularity in the discretion of the court is observed in particular in the amount.

“It is essential that the court, in the exercise of its discretion, sets the amount of the periodic penalty payment in each case in a way that is appropriate to the circumstances and proportionate to the infringement found and the Member State’s ability to pay. Seventy times the amount demanded by the European Commission does not in any event meet this requirement,” the expert underlined. He added that, in practice, the Commission monitors payments and sends regular reminders for non-payment. The amount is later deducted from the next transfer to the budget of the Member State concerned in a clearance of accounts procedure.

The judgment of the Court of Justice against Hungary for not admitting migrants is clearly a revenge move made by Brussels,

stressed Bence Rétvári, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, reports Magyar Nemzet. He said that the ruling of the CJEU is completely unjust, outrageous, and unacceptable for all Hungarians. The politician described the amount of the fine as gigantic, and added that this sum was almost as much as the total annual hospital costs.

Brussels is not prepared to accept that the Hungarian people reject the mass resettlement of illegal migrants in referendums, and parliamentary and European elections.

It is unacceptable that Brussels considers the rights of the Hungarian people to be of secondary importance and that the EU believes that those who break the law should be favored over those who obey it. It is outrageous that the EU is using its most powerful legal instrument to take away the Hungarian people’s right to decide for themselves who they live with and to defend their external borders,” the politician emphasized.

Rétvári confirmed that Hungary will always defend its borders and expects Brussels to cover the costs of building a border fence and protecting its external borders. He expressed the suspicion that the decision to condemn Hungary had already been made in Brussels, but that they had waited until after the EP elections to make it public, for fear that this would provoke even more outrage against Brussels. This shows that Hungary is not seen as an equal partner, but that they only want Hungary to abide by what is decided in Brussels, he concluded.

Via Magyar Nemzet, Ungarn Heute; Featured image via Facebook/Migrációkutató Intézet