EU judges balk at Hungarian deal freeing migrant smugglers

Hungary released 2,525 convicted smugglers under a scheme the court found too weak to deter crime, but the ruling does not automatically send them back to prison.(CN) — Hungary let convicted migrant smugglers trade prison sentences for a 72-hour deadline to leave the country, a deal the EU’s top court ruled illegal Thursday.Introduced by government decree in April 2023, the scheme benefited 2,525 people. The European Commission, the EU’s executive, asked the Court of Justice of the European Union to find the deal breached EU punishment rules and order Hungary to pay legal costs.The judges found the penalties neither worked in practice, nor discouraged crime or matched its seriousness. In their French-language judgment, they wrote, “It must, however, be noted that, despite the use of the term ‘detention,’ a person placed in special reintegration detention is not deprived of their liberty.”Released prisoners risked imprisonment if they stayed in Hungary or returned before their remaining sentences expired. But the decree provided no mechanism to enforce detention abroad or keep them in their designated country. The prospect of expulsion and a temporary return ban offered too little deterrence, the court found.Release was automatic once eligibility conditions were met. The judges said early release and alternatives to prison were permissible but required an assessment of the individual crime and offender, including the offense’s seriousness and any previous convictions.Hungary built a fence along its Serbian border in 2015 to block a route migrants used to reach Western Europe. Keeping their smugglers behind bars, however, came at a price. Citing crowded prisons and taxpayer costs, the government invoked emergency powers linked to the Ukraine war to introduce the releases. Austria summoned Hungary’s ambassador and tightened border controls over security concerns.Border restrictions continued even as migration patterns shifted. A Hungarian Helsinki Committee report updated in July recorded 5,580 pushbacks across the Serbian border in 2025, down from 100,138 in 2023. It linked the sharp fall in crossings in 2024 to Serbian police operations that displaced migrants from the border area.Péter Váczi, an associate professor of constitutional law at Széchenyi István University, described the scheme as effectively an amnesty to reduce prison numbers. He questioned what overcrowding had to do with the Ukraine war. The court did not answer that constitutional question, he said, or impose a general limit on emergency powers. Its message was narrower: Emergency decrees still had to meet EU punishment standards.Hungary had argued the return ban reflected each crime’s seriousness because it lasted as long as the unserved sentence. The judges disagreed. The scheme even covered smuggling for profit involving organized crime or danger to migrants’ lives, offenses for which EU law required a maximum available prison sentence of at least eight years.The decree was repealed on Aug. 19, 2025, through legislation reorganizing emergency measures into statutory law, while existing placements continued. That did not end the lawsuit. The court assessed compliance at the expiry of the commission’s deadline in late 2024, when the decree still applied.Andor Gál, a senior lecturer in criminal law at the University of Szeged, stressed that repeal had not stopped the proceedings. “The reintegration detention imposed on those convicted of human smuggling was nothing more than a form of parole in breach of EU law, which had no deterrent effect whatsoever,” he said.He also called the scheme discriminatory for giving foreign offenders benefits denied to Hungarians. That issue fell outside the commission’s claim, so the court did not decide it.For those already released, Váczi saw no automatic consequence. The judgment neither ordered rearrests nor reopened completed cases, and enforcing remaining sentences required a legal basis. He left any further action over continuing placements for Hungary and the commission to resolve. “The practical effect is therefore, in my view, mainly political and precedential rather than individual,” he said.The European Commission and Hungary did not respond to requests for comment.The judgment cannot be appealed. Hungary must pay legal costs and take the steps necessary to comply. Failure to do so could send it back to court, this time facing a commission request for financial penalties.Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads