Crimes against the border barrier in Hungary – Effective tools in the fight against irregular migration?

Abstract

Migration, or irregular migration is not a recent phenomenon. It has been present in our world for a long time and has historically posed challenges for countries affected by immigration. Keeping immigration under control has also been an important issue for the European Union since its beginnings. However, the situation has changed significantly in 2014 and 2015. The wave of migration that hit Hungary in 2015 marked the beginning of a new era in the history of migration in Europe and in Hungary, both in terms of quality and scale. In response, the Hungarian government formulated a package of measures consisting of several points. The first step was the construction of the temporary security border (also known in the literature as the “physical border barrier”), and the second was the adoption of Act CXL of 2015 by the Hungarian Parliament, which created the legal background for the management of mass immigration (the “legal border closure”). As the Hungarian solution was a unique one in the European Union in our paper we have to examine first the legality of constructing the border barrier. Once the test of legality has been met – as the second step – we turn to the presentation of the Hungarian substantive criminal law and its analysis. Finally, we evaluate the Hungarian legislation in the light of the principle of legality and from the perspective of symbolic criminal legislation. To support our arguments we also use criminal statistics provided by the Hungarian Prosecutor General’s Office for our research.