The latest ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) can be regarded as a pro-migration position, György Bakondi, Chief Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, stated on Thursday. According to Bakondi, the court’s formulation—that illegal migrants cannot be returned to any country where the rights of any minority might be endangered—could be applied to nearly all non-European countries of origin, thereby making deportations practically impossible.
The CJEU issued the ruling last week in a case brought by two Bangladeshi nationals who were rescued at sea and taken to an Italian detention centre in Albania. They challenged the rejection of their asylum application, arguing that Bangladesh is not safe, despite its designation on Italy’s list of safe countries.
The ruling significantly undermines Italy’s already embattled Albania model, established through an agreement between Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Albanian counterpart, Edi Rama, in 2023. Under the deal, the Balkan country would detain and process the asylum claims of up to 30,000 migrants intercepted in the Mediterranean, with two facilities to be constructed in Albania. The arrangement has already encountered legal challenges in Italian courts, which refused to validate the detention of the first three groups of asylum seekers transferred to Albania in October and November 2024, and again in February. The courts cited a previous CJEU ruling from October, which stipulated that the criteria for designating a third country as a safe country of origin must be fulfilled throughout its entire territory. In those instances, Bangladesh and Egypt were found not to be entirely safe across all regions or for all population groups.
In an effort to circumvent this legal constraint, the Italian government issued a decree in December listing 19 countries, including Bangladesh and Egypt, as ‘safe’ for repatriation. However, Italian judges—long at odds with Meloni—referred the matter to the CJEU, seeking clarification on how a country’s safety should be assessed and whether EU law overrides national legislation in cases of conflict.
Meloni described the court’s decision as ‘surprising’ and accused the EU judiciary of overreach. ‘Once again, the judiciary—this time at the European level—claims spaces that do not belong to it, encroaching on responsibilities that are political,’ she stated last Friday.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is likewise highly critical of the CJEU’s approach to migration-related cases. Speaking at the European Political Community (EPC) summit in Budapest in November 2024, Orbán warned that a major obstacle to the political will for change is what he termed ‘judicial activism’. He argued that ‘we decide things’, governments implement them, but common decisions are frequently undermined by European—and subsequently national—judicial rulings, causing progress in reducing migration to unravel. The only exception, he emphasized, is Hungary, which has consistently resisted judicial activism. The Prime Minister asserted: ‘I don’t think we can stop migration if we don’t revolt against the laws and court rulings currently in force.’
Hungary is currently being fined one million euros per day for protecting its borders and refusing entry to migrants, following a CJEU ruling issued in June 2024.
Commenting on the decision, Bakondi emphasized that under the UN Refugee Convention, protection is granted to those persecuted for religious, racial, or political reasons—specifically in the nearest safe country. In contrast, he explained that since 2015, migrants have been ‘trained’ to present themselves at borders as refugees. With the assistance of human smugglers, they reach the green border and discard their documents, making it impossible to verify their identity or nationality. As a result, they cannot be deported and often remain in the country illegally—frequently engaging in criminal activity, he added. Bakondi believes that the serious consequences of this trend for public safety are already visible in Western Europe.
He also noted that the populations of Western European countries are increasingly unwilling to tolerate illegal migration, which is now producing political consequences at the ballot box. Consequently, several affected member states are attempting to limit migration, yet these efforts are persistently obstructed by the central apparatus of the European Union—whether by the Commission or, as in this case, the court.
The Chief Advisor also addressed the EU Migration Pact, which he described as particularly disadvantageous for Hungary. He stated that Hungary would not implement the pact, and that an increasing number of member states now oppose its impracticable provisions, which run counter to the interests of European citizens. For this reason, Bakondi believes that a revision of the pact may soon be placed on the EU’s agenda.
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