BRUSSELS – Frontex, the European Union agency responsible for monitoring the bloc’s external borders, announced on Wednesday that it was suspending operations in Hungary, which ignored a court order to bring its asylum practices into line with European Union legislation.
In a decision in December 2020, the European Union Court of Justice ruled that the Hungarian practice of denying protection to asylum seekers and removing them to Serbia violated EU law.
But Hungary refused to end its policy, known as “pushback”, and the Hungarian Committee in Helsinki, a human rights group based in Budapest, estimates that about 4,500 people have been expelled from the country since last December, in direct challenge to the court decision.
In the midst of this stalemate, Frontex decided to withdraw from Hungary, the first time that the agency left an EU member state.
“Frontex has suspended all of its operational activities on the ground in Hungary,” the agency said in a statement to The New York Times. “Our common efforts to protect the EU’s external borders can only be successful if we ensure that our cooperation and activities are fully in line with EU law.”
The Hungarian government has been adopting the so-called setback policy for years, putting the country in conflict with the European Union.
Since the practice of retrogression was adopted by the Hungarian government in 2016, more than 50,000 asylum seekers have been expelled, the majority being sent back to Serbia, according to the Hungarian Committee in Helsinki. Many asylum seekers first arrive in Europe in Greece, then head to Serbia to try to enter Western Europe via Hungary. The Hungarian government has declared Serbia a safe country for asylum seekers.
“This is not happening in the shadows, it is happening openly,” said Andras Lederer, a senior defense officer at the Hungarian Committee in Helsinki, adding that the Hungarian police have publicly shared statistical data on their retrogression efforts since the high court decision.
The European Union itself, with 27 nations, has struggled to develop a coherent joint policy on migration, one of the most controversial issues in European policy since the refugee crisis of 2015, when the arrival of more than one million Syrian refugees fleeing Africa. war at home had a political impact on crises in many EU countries and was used as a political instrument by the far right.
The issue of migration has become a lightning rod in the intensification of cultural wars in Europe, in which right-wing populist leaders have loved to fight.
Nobody more than Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, who emerged as an anti-migration arsonist behind the 2015 crisis.
Orban’s government erected an electrified barbed wire fence along Hungary’s southern border with Serbia and followed a series of policies that made Hungary an inhospitable destination for asylum seekers. This included detaining asylum seekers in metal containers and automatically rejecting them if they left the guarded areas they inhabited while their asylum applications were pending, a practice overturned by the EU’s higher court in May 2020.
The prime minister also released the narrative that Europe’s response to the migration crisis is part of a conspiracy by billionaire George Soros and Brussels, and implied that the goal is to replace Europe’s white Christian population with Muslims.
The prime minister’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Frontex’s decision Wednesday.
In late December, an important internal security adviser in Orban defended the country’s approach.
“Despite the many political attacks that Hungary has faced because of its actions in protecting the border, the government has, in the interest of the nation and with the support of the Hungarian population, consistently represented the migration policy that has followed since 2015, ”Said the adviser, Gyorgy Bakondi.
Frontex informed the European Commission on Wednesday afternoon that it was suspending its operations in Hungary, according to a commission spokesman, the bloc’s executive arm. According to EU regulations, the decision to suspend operations rests entirely with Frontex and can be taken if there is a strong reason to believe that illegal actions are taking place in the member country.
The Warsaw-based agency is in the process of dispatching the bloc’s first joint border guard force and buying and renting high-tech equipment, including drones, that allow EU countries to monitor their borders. But his most visible current job is to explore a group of border guard teams from across the bloc and deploy them under his command to the borders of other EU countries, when they need help.
Wednesday’s decision means that Frontex officials will no longer help their Hungarian counterparts.
The agency, which in recent years has emerged as one of the best-financed in the bloc, faces a growing internal crisis, as increasing evidence shows that it has been complicit in large-scale human rights violations in Greece, where the agency maintains a strong presence.
His leadership is under severe criticism from the bloc’s institutions and is being investigated by the EU’s anti-fraud agency, after allegations of harassment, misallocation of funds and misconduct that have led to a growing exodus of personnel.
An internal investigation into the agency’s participation in Greece’s resistance to asylum seekers in Turkey continues.
Frontex’s decision to suspend operations in Hungary is just the most recent in a series of clashes between the European Union and Orban, which has demonstrated a certain skill in preventing the bloc’s efforts to sanction its government for abuses of the rule of law.
A 2018 European Parliament vote calling on other EU institutions to open a process to assess the serious risks to the rule of law in Hungary has not progressed, and an attempt to strengthen the rule of law standards in Member States as part of the The bloc’s next budget and the coronavirus stimulus package have been drastically diluted following objections from Hungary and Poland.
With the bloc’s political institutions less willing to fight Orban over the rule of law, the role of the EU’s highest court in facing Hungary has become more pronounced.
In June 2020, the court overturned another Hungarian law that imposed “discriminatory and unjustified restrictions” on Hungarian civil society organizations that received funding from abroad. Instead of changing the legislation to comply with EU law, the Hungarian government has started to apply it.
Such disregard for the decisions of the higher court sets a dangerous precedent, said Lederer, the human rights activist.
“It fits a pattern that started last year, which is, of course, extremely worrying,” he said. “Ultimately, the EU’s legal order is based on respect for the court’s final decisions.”
Monika Pronczuk reported from Brussels and Benjamin Novak from Budapest.