Hungary sues ECJ over judgment on Hungarian asylum rules

Hungary filed a lawsuit against the European Court of Justice on Monday morning because of the court's ruling against the country on migration issues, Justice Minister Bence Tuzson announced on Monday in Budapest. The European Commission had previously launched infringement proceedings against Hungary over its asylum rules, which ended up in the EU court after some correspondence. The Hungarian government lost the case in December 2020 and, although the government had taken steps in accordance with the European Commission's recommendations, it did not fully align Hungarian legislation with the ruling.

The European Court of Justice fined Hungarian authorities a total of €200 million for deliberately circumventing EU asylum rules, according to the court. This "constitutes an unprecedented and extremely serious breach of EU law" and shifts the responsibility of the government to other countries, the EU court said last year. The amount of the fine increases by €1 million for each day. We wrote more about the penalty in this article.

Tuzson said that since this was a final ruling of the court, Hungary is not challenging it, but is instead filing a lawsuit for damages. The minister said that the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union stipulates that if a European institution causes damage to a member state, it is obliged to compensate for that damage. In his opinion, the European Court of Justice failed to comply with several rules and did not apply several principles that it should have applied in its judgment, thereby violating Hungary's rights. Therefore, Hungary can file a lawsuit for damages against the court, so that the court would have to pay most of the amount due to the European Union, not Hungary, the Minister said, according to a report by the Hungarian News Agency MTI.

According to Tuzson, this is not really a legal matter, as according to him, the decision of the European Court of Justice was based on ideological and political rather than legal grounds.

The Hungarian government officially decided at the end of last year to take legal action in this matter, and therefore allocated €1.5 million from the 2025 budget for this purpose. The Ministry of Justice then issued a statement saying that the government considered the fine unacceptable and that the €1.5 million would be used to involve international legal experts. Minister of Justice Bence Tuzson was then tasked with examining the options for averting the consequences of the ruling.

Last November, the government admitted that no cohesion funds had been received since the penalty was imposed; according to EUrologus, there were simply not enough invoices from which to deduct the money.

The lawsuit was announced six months ago by Viktor Orbán's advisor György Bakondi, but the government had already decided in December last year to take legal action, even if it cost up to HUF 600 million.

Under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, it is indeed possible to bring an action for damages, but "the European Court of Justice has exclusive jurisdiction in disputes for damages against the EU. This means that the EU cannot be sued before national courts of Member States or international courts." In other words, based on this, the Hungarian government could only sue the EU Court of Justice for its judgment. In addition, in order to obtain compensation, the plaintiff would also have to prove that the institutions or their employees acted unlawfully under EU law – in other words, the EU Court of Justice would have to rule that its own final judgment was unlawful.