(AP) Hungary’s practice of keeping asylum seekers in a closed transit zone on the border with Serbia qualifies as “unlawful detention,” according to [a] nonbinding opinion issued Thursday by a senior official at the European Union’s highest court.
Over the past few years, Hungary has introduced increasingly tough anti-immigration measures and built transit zones made out of shipping containers in the wake of the 2015 migration crisis, when some 400,000 people passed through the country on their way to Western Europe.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban boasted recently that “there is not a single Muslim migrant in Hungary.”
Priit Pikamae, advocate general of the Court of Justice of the European Union, was critical Thursday of several anti-immigration rules applied by Hungary, including one which makes it possible to reject asylum applications from anyone arriving from Serbia.
