The updated AIDA Country Report on Hungary provides a detailed overview on legislative and practice-related developments in asylum procedures, reception conditions, detention of asylum seekers, content of international protection, as well as procedure for and content of temporary protection in 2022.
Statistics on asylum in 2022 illustrate how severely access to the asylum procedure in Hungary is hindered with the current ‘embassy procedure’. In 2022, only 44 persons managed to apply for asylum in Hungary. While 17 statements of intent were lodged as part of the embassy procedure, only 4 Iraqi nationals were granted entry authorisations by the NDGAP. Judgments by national courts found that the decisions rejecting the statements of intent lacked sufficient reasoning, but no asylum seeker involved in these procedures has been granted entry as of yet. Persons who legally enter Hungary in another manner and attempt to apply for asylum inside Hungary also continue to be denied access to the asylum procedure. Concurrently, at least 158,565 persons were pushed back to Serbia, twice as much as in 2021. The government refuses to implement the CJEU and ECtHR judgements that have found that illegal pushbacks continue to take place.
In the asylum procedure, the ‘hybrid’ safe third country/first country of asylum inadmissibility ground, ruled unlawful by the CJEU in 2020, was removed from the Asylum Act in 2022.
On the matter of national security procedures, the CJEU ruled that the Hungarian asylum system was again not in conformity in EU law: asylum seekers and beneficiaries of international protection must access to at least the essence of the grounds of the expert authority’s decision on national security risk, and the asylum authority must state in its decision the reasons for which protection is being refused, and cannot rely solely on the unreasoned decision of the expert authorities. At the national level, the decree removing the right to request suspensive effect of an expulsion decision based on national security grounds is no longer in force.
Proportionately more beneficiaries of international protection received Hungarian citizenship in 2022. Moreover, the NGDAP initiated much less international protection withdrawal procedures than in 2021, although this may be partially due to overburdening of the NDGAP which was also in charge of temporary protection procedures.
Meanwhile, following the war in Ukraine, in 2022 over 2.8 million persons fleeing Ukraine entered Hungary, although the authorities registered only 33,273 applicants for temporary protection. 923 individuals instead received tolerated status in application of the non-refoulement principle. As of 31 December 2022, there were 28,908 beneficiaries of temporary protection in Hungary.
Hungary’s temporary protection framework does not comply with EU law as third country nationals, including those with a permanent residence permit in Ukraine, are not eligible for any form of adequate protection; moreover, persons denied temporary protection cannot access the asylum procedure due to the ‘embassy procedure’. Since January 2023, third country nationals also experience difficulties crossing the border between Ukraine and Hungary due to not holding the appropriate visa despite their right to residence in Ukraine. Only 7,000 individuals receive the subsistence allowance, the only State-funded financial assistance available to the 28,908 temporary protection beneficiaries. The State also did not ensure adequate access to housing, as no state-run facility received displaced persons from Ukraine in 2022, rather housing was provided by municipalities, churches, charities, NGOs, private entities. In addition, beneficiaries of temporary protection struggled to access education and health care services.
For further information:
- Find comparative information in the Asylum Information Database (AIDA) managed by ECRE