Orbán government’s decree releasing migrant smugglers from prison violated EU law, CJEU rules

The Hungarian state infringed EU law by converting the final custodial sentences imposed for trafficking in human beings into ‘special reintegration detention’, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on Thursday.

According to the court’s statement, the measure does not constitute an effective, dissuasive, and proportionate penalty.

It was in April 2023 that the previous Hungarian government issued a decree reclassifying prison sentences for migrant smuggling as ‘special reintegration detention’. According to a statement from the European Commission, this means that foreign convicts can be released even if they have only served a small portion of their sentence. They are then under obligation to leave Hungarian territory within 72 hours of their release in order to travel to the country of their former habitual residence or to the country of which they are a national.

The European Commission launched an infringement procedure against Hungary over this in July 2023, as it deemed that the former government’s measure violated the EU directive on combating human trafficking and the framework decision on penalties. After some back-and-forth correspondence, the EU body filed a lawsuit last year, arguing that the Hungarian authorities had not made sufficient efforts, and that the government’s response in December 2024 was deemed inadequate. The European Commission found that the regulation does not provide adequate safeguards for the enforcement and oversight of reintegration detention. According to the Commission, the Hungarian measure undermined the deterrent effect of EU legislation and the “joint EU efforts to combat migrant smuggling.”

The court’s Thursday statement said that it has upheld the Commission’s action and finds that Hungary has failed to fulfil its obligations under EU law. Furthermore, "special reintegration detention does not have the required effective, proportionate
and dissuasive nature", because

human traffickers “could be reassured that, if apprehended and tried in Hungary, they would, at worst, be deported from Hungarian territory and prohibited from returning there for a certain period”.

The penalty also cannot be considered proportionate, because “the release of the person concerned is automatic”. For example, the circumstances of the offence or of the character of the person who committed it are not taken into account.

The government decree is also applied to crimes which, under EU law, are punishable by imprisonment, which also violates EU obligations.

In the next stage of the infringement procedure, the European Commission may once again turn to the court. At that point, the question would no longer be whether a penalty should be imposed, but rather, immediately, how large it should be.

“The Orbán government now has a document stating that instead of taking substantive action against human trafficking, it actually facilitated illegal migration,” — Eszter Lakos said in her reaction to the ruling. According to the head of the Tisza Party’s delegation to the European Parliament, “today’s decision by the European Court of Justice exposes Fidesz’s hypocrisy: while they presented themselves to the domestic and international public as champions in the fight against illegal migration, they released and deported more than 2,500 human traffickers who had been sentenced by Hungarian courts to prison terms that were final and enforceable. Letting these criminals go free not only created new problems for the EU as a whole, but also sent a message to human traffickers that they can continue their activities uninterrupted, as at most they will be expelled from the country for a short time.”