EU civil war brewing as rebel member fails to pay huge £168m fine

Hungary has missed its first deadline to pay the £168million fine imposed by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over its restrictions on asylum rights. Brussels has now issued a second payment request, with a final deadline set for September 17.

Failure to comply again would spark a potential political clash, setting in motion the "offsetting procedure" with the European Commission deducting £168million from Hungary’s allocated share of the EU budget.

The fine, handed down in June, followed the ECJ’s ruling that Hungary had committed a serious breach of EU law by severely limiting access to asylum procedures.

The ECJ ruled: “Hungary is ordered to pay a lump sum of 200 million euros and a penalty payment of 1 million euros per day of delay for failure to comply with a judgment of the Court of Justice.

“That failure, which consists in deliberately avoiding the application of a common EU policy as a whole, constitutes an unprecedented and extremely serious infringement of EU law.”

The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, deemed the court's decision as "outrageous and unacceptable" and lashed out on X, saying: "The ECJ’s decision to fine Hungary with 200M euros plus 1M euros daily(!!!) for defending the borders of the European Union is outrageous and unacceptable. It seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens.”

The legal battle can be traced back to a 2020 ECJ ruling that condemned Hungary's treatment of asylum seekers, including the use of "transit zones" where people were held under detention-like conditions without proper access to legal advice.

While these transit zones have now been shut, Hungary continues to make it "virtually impossible" to file applications through restrictive measures, such as requiring refugees to submit applications at the embassies in Kyiv, Ukraine or Belgrade, Serbia before entering the country.

Budapest has been given until September 31 to detail any measures, if at all, it has taken to comply with EU asylum regulations.

Experts note that Hungary has shown no sign of backing down so far, and may escalate the issue into a full-blown civil war.

Currently, parts of Hungary's EU funding remain frozen due to its refusal to adhere to the law.