The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg has fined Hungary €200 million euros for failing to comply with EU-wide refugee admission policies.
Budapest was also ordered to pay €1 million for each day of delay until it brings legislation in line with European standards.
"The willful circumvention of the rules of the EU common policy as a whole constitutes an entirely new and exceptionally serious violation of the bloc's legislation," the document reads.
The reason for the fine was a decision made in Hungary in 2020 according to which only those who had already been granted refugee status in Kiev or Belgrade could get permission to enter the country. In other cases, people were turned away at the border.
In response, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban promised to retaliate against the EU for the fine. His words are quoted by the Bloomberg publication.
"The court's decision to fine Hungary 200 million euros plus one million euros a day for protecting EU borders is outrageous and unacceptable. It seems that illegal migrants are more important to Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens," he wrote on his social media accounts.
"We will figure out a way to make Brussels suffer more than we do," the prime minister added.
As "BBC" notes, after 2015, when more than a million refugees, mostly from Syria, arrived in Hungary, Budapest took a tough stance against migrants coming from outside the EU. To stop them, Hungarian authorities erected barriers on the border.
