The Hungarian government is making no attempt to conceal its violation of the law. You can read all about it on an official website, which meticulously records the statistics for every single week of the year, by category, with precise case figures.

These concern the deportation of refugees by Hungarian border guards from Hungary to Serbia. According to the official statistics, which can be found on the website of the Hungarian police, 2,824 refugees were apprehended near the border fence and forced to return to Serbia in January this year alone. Added to this, another 184 refugees were apprehended who must first stand trial in Hungary. They, too, will usually be deported back to Serbia.

These “pushbacks” not only contravene international treaties to which Hungary is a signatory, such as the Geneva Convention. Since December of last year, they also violate a legally binding ruling by the highest court of the European Union, the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Its ruling declared the pushbacks unlawful — but the Hungarian government is ignoring the judges’ verdict. So far, Hungarian border guards have sent around 5,000 refugees back to Serbia since December 17, 2020, the day the verdict was announced. Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orban, and several members of his government have repeatedly confirmed that they intend to continue the practice.

‘Escort to a gate opening’

Andras Lederer, the migration policy expert of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, one of the country’s most important non-governmental organizations, says this is “open and very serious defiance” of ECJ rulings, and thus of EU law, which is binding on Hungary. “It’s not very often in the legal field that things are crystal clear,” Lederer told DW. “But that is the case with ECJ rulings. They are binding, and Hungary must obey and implement them. But the Hungarian government is not doing it.”

In Hungarian officialese, the pushbacks are called “escort of apprehended illegal migrants to a gate opening of the Provisional Border Security Barrier (IBH).” This refers to the fence along the Serbian border, which since 2015 has been upgraded to a high-security installation. Gates have also been set into it at regular intervals. Refugees are sent back through these, usually immediately after they are picked up.

Violation of EU directives

Until recently, at least according to the Hungarian government’s interpretation, there was a trick that covered this practice. The fence along the border with Serbia is situated on Hungarian territory, a few meters back from the actual border. So Hungary could argue that “escorting” refugees through a gate in the border fence was not deportation — because on the other side of the fence they were still, de facto, on Hungarian territory. This, at any rate, was the argument repeatedly put forward by Hungarian government representatives, as for example with regard to the question of whether the pushbacks constituted a violation of the Geneva Convention on Refugees.

However, in its December verdict, the ECJ explicitly ruled that taking refugees to the other side of the border fence was illegal, even though this was still Hungarian territory. As the persons concerned then had no option but to leave Hungarian territory, it said, this was equivalent to deportation. And sending them back without specific guarantees, such as individual assessment of their case, was a violation of EU directives.

Wear them down, starve them out

This is not the first time the ECJ has condemned the Hungarian government for its refugee policy. In May last year, the court in Strasbourg declared that the conditions of Hungary’s accommodation of refugees in so-called transit zones was unlawful.

At the end of 2015, Hungary established two transit zones near the fence along the Serbian border. Here, refugees were able to apply for asylum. However, in recent years, the conditions for staying there had become more and more restrictive. Couples and families were separated; only babies were allowed to stay with their mothers. The accommodation was extremely cramped, and resembled the high-security wing of a prison. Finally, refugees were also hardly being given any food.

Hungarian civil rights campaigners criticized these practices, which they described as “wearing them down and starving them out”. The Hungarian government argued that the refugees had not been imprisoned and could leave the transit zone at any time in order to get provisions. However, according to Hungarian asylum law, leaving the transit zone automatically resulted in the termination of the asylum process, with the refugee banned from reapplying.

The ECJ ruled that conditions in the transit zones constituted unlawful imprisonment. Hungary closed the transit zones as a result. Ever since, refugees have been able to apply for asylum only at the Hungarian embassies of non-EU member countries, primarily Serbia and Ukraine. Last autumn, the European Commission responded to this regulation by initiating further proceedings against Hungary, and these are still ongoing.

European Commission irresolute

Responding to an inquiry from DW, the Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs did not explain on what basis the Hungarian government was refusing to implement the ECJ’s December ruling.

A written statement from his communications department, which repeats almost word-for-word a Facebook post by the Hungarian justice minister, Judit Varga, from December last year, says: “The government continues to protect Hungary’s and Europe‘s borders and will do everything to prevent the formation of international migrant corridors.” It goes on to say that the conditions that were the subject of the verdict no longer pertain and that the ruling is therefore invalid. Kovacs does not explain what exactly is meant by this.

Given the Hungarian government’s refusal to implement the ECJ’s December 2020 ruling, Andras Lederer from the Helsinki Committee is calling on the European Commission to take action. “It would be possible to impose financial sanctions on Hungary, in the form of significant daily fines, for the non-execution of ECJ rulings,” Lederer says.

However, the civil rights campaigner is not optimistic that this will happen: “Unfortunately, it looks as if the European Commission is not as resolute as it needs to be when a member state violates existing laws.”

This article has been adapted from German.

New Delhi: The European Union has said its first high-level dialogue on trade with India saw interest by both sides in resuming negotiations for an ambitious, comprehensive and mutually beneficial trade and investment pact once their respective approaches and positions are “close enough”.
It said the two sides had “open and constructive” exchanges on a broad range of issues with an aim of enhancing EU-India bilateral trade and investment relations.

The EU said the dialogue covered issues like impact of the coronavirus pandemic as well as production of vaccines and their distribution.

The decision to establish the high-level dialogue mechanism on trade and investment was taken at the 15th EU-India summit in July last.

The meeting on Friday was co-chaired by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Valdis Dombrovskis, the executive vice-president and commissioner for trade of the EU.

The negotiations between India and the EU on a free trade agreement have been stalled since May 2013, when both sides failed to bridge substantial gaps on crucial issues, including data security status for the IT sector. The negotiations were launched in June 2007.

“Minister Goyal and Executive Vice-President Dombrovskis reiterated their interest in resuming negotiations for ambitious, comprehensive and mutually beneficial trade and investment agreements once their respective approaches and positions are close enough,” the EU said in a statement.

“In the meantime, they examined alternative approaches and looked into the possibility of opening new areas of cooperation, for instance in relation to the resilience of global value chains and regulatory cooperation, notably in relation to new technologies,” it said.

The statement was released by the EU’s office in India on Monday.

“In the run up to the Leaders’ Meeting, the co-chairs tasked experts to look into the feasibility of resuming work on trade and investment agreements; new areas of cooperation (regulatory aspects and resilient value chains); as well as enhancing collaboration on WTO reform,” the EU said.

“This will be followed by another meeting of the high-level dialogue to take stock of experts’ discussions ahead of the Leaders’ Meeting,” it said.

The EU-India annual summit is expected to be held later this year.

The EU said Dombrovskis and Goyal discussed trade and investment issues with emphasis on the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as vaccine production and distribution mechanisms, including value chain linkages.

The two sides exchanged views on “the state of play of EU-India bilateral trade and investment relations, and possible ways forward”, it said.

“The two sides recalled their continued attachment to the rules-based multilateral trading system,” the EU added.

It said Dombrovskis and Goyal further exchanged views on various key policy developments and market access issues.

“The EU side provided an update on the ongoing review of the Generalised Scheme of Preferences, which expires end of 2023, and on the work towards EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism under the European Green Deal, while the Indian side provided an updated on the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Self-Reliant India’ initiatives,” the EU said.

Future carbon border tax should be introduced for products of oil refineries and the glass, paper and aluminium industry and not only for the power sector and energy-intensive industrial sectors like cement, steel, chemicals, and fertilisers, European lawmakers said.

The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety of the European Parliament will vote on a report regarding the planned European Union carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) that would be compatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization. The document will be later adopted as a European Parliament’s resolution to set the parliamentarians’ position ahead of the European Commission’s formal legal proposal for CBAM, expected by the end of June.

In one of the amendments, the parliamentarians are asking the European Commission to make the scope of the carbon border tax very broad.

“The European Parliament Considers that a CBAM should eventually cover all imports, but that in an initial phase, from 2023, it should cover the power sector and energy-intensive industrial sectors like cement, steel, aluminium, chemicals, glass, paper, oil refining and fertilisers, which continue to receive substantial free allocations, and still represent 94% of EU industrial emissions,” the article reads.

The current version of the document didn’t include oil refining, glass, paper, and aluminium, but representatives of the green, liberal, socialist and centre-right groups joined up to table an amendment to broaden the scope of CBAM.

Frans Timmermans, European Commission executive vice-president for the European Green Deal, recently said the EU would introduce a carbon border tax on non-EU countries unless they commit to lowering their emissions.

It could heavily affect big economies like China but also the Western Balkans and other countries.

Investment facilitation, regulatory cooperation, trade barriers and IPR may

India and the EU will take forward discussions on the launch of an investment facilitation mechanism, initiation of regulatory cooperation and removal of identified trade barriers for their possible inclusion in the list of deliverables at the Leaders’ Summit scheduled in May 2021 in Portugal, a government official has said.

At the recent India-EU high level trade group meeting led by commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and his counterpart from the European Commission Valdis Dombrovskis, the two decided to meet within the next three months to give a final push to quick deliverables before the Summit.

India, EU discuss re-initiating talks on bilateral free trade pact starting with interim agreement

Other issues that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and leaders from the European Union and European Commission are likely to discuss at the India-EU Summit include continuation of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) dialogue, collaborating in research and innovation, promoting clean economy, addressing multilateral issues of mutual interest and building resilient value chains, the official tracking the matter told BusinessLine.

More ambitious agenda

The EU is the second largest export destination for India, after the US, with exports in April-March 2019-20 at $45 billion accounting for 14.36 per cent of the country’s total exports. Imports from the bloc into India were at par with exports at $45 billion during the fiscal, accounting for 9.5 per cent of India’s total imports.

“Despite Covid-19, the decisions taken at the last India-EU Summit in July 2020 have been taken forward by the two sides in great earnestness. The two sides are of the view that it is the right time to draw a more ambitious agenda for mutual cooperation,” the official said.

It was at the July Summit that a decision was taken to form an India-EU high level trade group to discuss and take forward at the Ministers’ level, all pending trade related matters and also address new ones.

At the first meeting of the high level trade group last week, Dombrovskis informed that Portugal had assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU from January 1, 2021, and it had made EU-India relations a top priority, the official added.

Early Harvest Programme

Although a decision is yet to be taken on when the talks on an India-EU free trade agreement (Broad-based Trade & Investment Agreement) will be re-launched, India has expressed its keenness to start with an Early Harvest Programme at the earliest and then move on to a full-fledged pact.

“Both sides agreed on monthly progress review of discussions by senior officials and quarterly review by the Ministers for providing guidance,” the official said.

It would take concerted efforts to re-start the talks that were suspended in 2014 over serious differences on issues such as market access for wines & spirits, automobile and financial institutions as well as EU’s insistence on inclusion of non-trade issues such as labour and environment.

Putting in place better investment facilitation measures and greater regulatory cooperation are issues that both sides have been pushing for as it could greatly facilitate business between the two sides. Lack of understanding of regulatory procedures has resulted at times in rejection of Indian exports in EU countries while investors from EU have been seeking simpler investment procedures in India.