(Reuters) The European Union’s top court ruled on Thursday that four asylum seekers stuck in a transit zone on the Hungarian-Serbian border had effectively been detained and that a local court should release them immediately.
The Court of Justice of the European Union was reviewing the case of two Afghan and two Iranian nationals who arrived in Hungary from Serbia in late 2018 and early 2019 and applied for asylum from the Hungarian Röszke transit zone on the Serbian-Hungarian border.
Their asylum applications were rejected by Hungary, which ordered them to return to Serbia, but Serbia would not admit them. The asylum seekers appealed Hungary’s bid to send them back to their countries of origin.
