Protecting the rights of refugees fleeing Ukraine

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee is asking Hungary’s highest court (Kúria) to review court rulings that rejected lawsuits filed on behalf of refugee families from Transcarpathia (Zakarpattia, western Ukraine) seeking continued access to state-funded accommodation. We believe, the courts’ interpretation of the law is flawed and inconsistent with the protections guaranteed under the Temporary Protection Directive. 

Earlier developments in the case

The situation began in the summer of 2024 when the Hungarian government announced that after 21 August 2024 only refugees from areas directly affected by the fighting would remain eligible for state-funded housing. Refugees from other parts of Ukraine could apply for an individual exemption by submitting leniency requests to the Government Commissioner’s office responsible for refugees from Ukraine within an extremely short deadline on a call that was not widely shared among the affected refugees. The Government Commissioner rejected most applications – around 80% – despite applicants’ difficult personal circumstances. Many of the affected applicants were single mothers with children, who then turned to the Hungarian Helsinki Committee for legal assistance and challenged the decisions in court.

The recent court ruling 

In the latest development, the Budapest-Capital Regional Court ruled that the government decree does not violate EU law, arguing that the EU Temporary Protection Directive leaves a wide margin of discretion to member states regarding the provision of accommodation to refugees. The court also declined to request a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union, stating that the directive was sufficiently clear for the Hungarian court to interpret on its own. 

Why the Hungarian Helsinki Committee disagrees 

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee disputes this reasoning on several grounds. 

First, we believe that the Directive cannot be considered so clear if courts must interpret it in lengthy reasoning rather than referring questions to the EU’s highest judicial authority. 

Second, the court’s interpretation effectively rewrites the Directive in order to justify the Hungarian regulation. The very purpose of temporary protection is to ensure real and predictable support for people fleeing war – not to allow political or administrative decisions to exclude large groups from basic assistance. 

The consequences of the Hungarian regulation have been severe: families with temporary protection status have been left without accommodation from one day to the next.Even if Member States have discretion in implementing EU law, our firm conviction is that this discretion cannot be unlimited or used to justify arbitrary decisions that harm vulnerable people. 

Appeal to Hungary’s highest court 

For these reasons, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee is now filing a review request with the Kúria, Hungary’s highest judicial forum. 

We hope that the Kúria will clarify that housing support for refugees under temporary protection cannot be arbitrarily withdrawn, and that national regulations must not undermine the protection guaranteed by EU law. 

The outcome of the case will not only affect the families we represent. More broadly, it will determine whether people fleeing the war in Ukraine receive genuine protection in Hungary – or merely a formal legal status without meaningful support.