Hungary Making Ukrainians Homeless, Daily Brief September 12, 2024

One new low follows another in Hungary under authoritarian ruler Viktor Orbán, who seems determined to turn his country into the EU’s largest per capita exporter of embarrassment.

Dominating the headlines here in Brussels at the moment is the Hungarian government’s threat to put migrants and asylum seekers on busses and send them to the European capital. It’s sparked yet another diplomatic spat between Hungary and its EU partners.

If the threat were carried out, Hungary would weaponize migrants and asylum seekers in a way reminiscent of the dictatorship of Belarus.

The Hungarian government claims it is protesting a June ruling by the European Court of Justice, the EU’s top court in issues of EU law, that Hungary had committed an “unprecedented and exceptionally serious breach of EU law” when it introduced restrictions on the right to asylum.

The court’s decision came with a €200 million fine, due next week, in addition to a daily fine a €1 million as long as Budapest refuses to comply with EU law.

Being in breach of EU law is something of a habit for this Hungarian government, maybe even a kind of addiction – to international attention seeking? – especially when it comes to migration and asylum policies.

In another recent move, the government issued a draconian decree cancelling state-funded shelter for refugees from western Ukraine, leaving some 3,000 Ukrainian refugees homeless.

The new decree cuts housing support for refugees from parts of Ukraine the Hungarian authorities deem safe to return to, even when Russia is lobbing missiles into these areas all too frequently. Just days ago, for example, Russian forces attacked the city of Lviv in western Ukraine, killing seven civilians, including two children, and injuring 66.

The Hungarian government apparently regards this as safe.

In terms of EU law, the decree breaches the 2001 EU Temporary Protection Directive, which was triggered in March 2022 following Russia’s full-scale, atrocity-ridden invasion of Ukraine. It requires EU member states, like Hungary, to grant temporary protection and assistance to all refugees from Ukraine.

The Hungarian government has an abysmal track record on refugees’ and migrants’ rights, and not only for Ukrainians. These latest moves and threats are part of a long-running effort by Orbán’s ruling party to use vulnerable people as a political scapegoat, trying to hoodwink Hungarians into believing their problems are caused by the powerless, rather than by those in power.

But this decree is truly a new low for Orbán and his crew. As my expert colleague, Lydia Gall, summarizes it: this is a “cruel law that is putting thousands of people who fled the war in Ukraine on the streets.”