ECHR: Hungary violated the rights of three illegal immigrants by “collectively” expelling them

On June 24, the European Court of Human Rights agreed with three illegal immigrants who had sued the Hungarian state for refusing to process their asylum applications. 

The case involved two Afghans and one Syrian who were in Hungary illegally. Two of them crossed the border illegally with the help of a smuggler, and one of them crossed the border legally, but after his residency rights expired, he remained in Hungarian territory for 2 years until the Hungarian authorities became interested in him. All had applied for asylum in Hungary, citing a general sense of insecurity in their countries of origin.

The Hungarian authorities deported all three of them without a detailed analysis of their claims of insecurity. However, all found refuge in other EU countries – one was smuggled by a smuggler to Germany, where he filed another asylum application, another went to Austria, where he also filed an asylum application, and the third is in Serbia. 

All of them filed complaints with the European Court of Human Rights, demanding that they be awarded € 15,000, € 20,000, and € 5,000 in monetary compensation, respectively. 

The European Court of Human Rights upheld the complaint, finding that Hungary had violated the prohibition on the collective expulsion of foreigners (Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 to the ECHR), the right to an effective remedy (Article 13 of the ECHR) and the prohibition on degrading and inhuman treatment (Article 3 of the ECHR). It awarded €10,000 in compensation to the first immigrant, €8,000 to the second, and €5,000 to the third. 

The Court said that every asylum application should, in principle, be examined on its merits by the host country. Each case should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, which should include identification of the applicant and verification of his claims to justify the granting of asylum. 

Ordo Iuris comment: 

The ECHR’s ruling is in line with the previous strict line of jurisprudence in immigration cases, according to which asylum claims must be considered on the merits, regardless of whether someone has filed such a claim in accordance with domestic procedure or only after being caught red-handed being in the country illegally. This is a consequence of the archaic Protocol No. 4 to the ECHR, adopted more than 60 years ago, at a time when the phenomenon of mass immigration was unknown. The ban on the collective expulsion of foreigners may have made sense in an era when the average European country received several hundred asylum applications a year. Today, the sense of this ban is questionable when some European countries have hundreds of thousands of asylum applications to process, a significant portion of which come from people forcing their way across the border by force, illegally, with obvious disregard for national legal order. 

If one also takes into account the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union – including two recent rulings limiting the ability of member states to combat illegal immigration – it becomes clear that doubts about the real chances of more efficient removal of illegal immigrants from the EU after the EU migration pact comes into force next year are fully justified.

Judgment of the ECHR of June 24, 2025 in the case of H.Q. v. Hungary.

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The Migration Pact and the Protection of the EU’s External Borders in 26 Questions and Answers.