The Practice of the Hungarian Constitutional Court on Asylum

Abstract

The modern-day history of asylum in Hungary ranges from being the country of origin of refugees, through the country of asylum, to the country protecting theexternal borders of the European Union (EU) and rejecting the refugees. Asylum, which came into focus as a result of the Arab Spring in 2015, has raised numerous issues such as access to territory, pushbacks, procedural guarantees, detention, transit zones, the effectiveness of remedies, and sovereignty and free decisionmaking on the side of the state. These issues may also have a constitutional dimension. However, a review of the practice of the Hungarian Constitutional Court shows that asylum issues are not grouped along these lines, but rather as per the division of competences between the EU and Hungary. Consequently, some constitutional court procedures have been examined in the context of constitutional interpretation rather than that of constitutional complaint procedures. Furthermore, the constitutional context has changed, influencing the approach of the Constitutional Court. Based on this, the paper first interprets the relationship between asylum and sovereignty and the function of the Constitutional Court in asylum matters, placing the issue in the context of the history of asylum in Hungary. Second, it presents the related practice of the Constitutional Court according to three aspects, namely sovereignty and constitutional identity, the role of human dignity, and interpretation of asylum law by the Constitutional Court.