Content of International Protection

Since June 2016, the Hungarian state has completely withdrawn integration services provided to beneficiaries of international protection, thus leaving recognised refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection to destitution and homelessness. Only non- and intergovernmental and church-based organisations provide services aimed at integration such as housing, language courses, assistance with finding employment, or with family reunification.[1] However, their capacities are seriously limited and cannot provide for all. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic further aggravated the already existing problems and difficulties for beneficiaries of international protection in the absence of integration and support programmes. In 2022 and 2023, accessing the available solutions became even more difficult for the system being overburdened by the Ukrainian refugee flow.

The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe pointed out in her 2019 report that xenophobic rhetoric and attitudes in Hungary have a harmful effect on the integration of recognised refugees.[2] According to a comparative report on refugee integration frameworks in 14 EU Member States from 2019 among east-central European countries, Hungary provides the least advantageous integration policy framework. According to the authors, this is due to deliberate policy choices.[3]

In June 2019, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommended that Hungary take all immediate measures to stop racist hate speech and incitement to violence against, among others, asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. The Committee was particularly alarmed by racist and discriminatory statements made by public figures, with more power to promote racial hatred.[4] The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants remarked that journalists from local media helped fuelling xenophobia and anti-migration attitudes in Hungary.[5] The UNHCR raised similar concerns. According to the organisation, ‘the Government of Hungary has been systematically pursuing an anti-refugee rhetoric over the years. In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and other senior government officials have on several occasions asserted that foreigners and migrants are to blame for the arrival of the pandemic in Hungary. This rhetoric has fuelled xenophobia, ethnic and racial hatred including by associating immigration and refugees with terrorism, by vilifying refugees and migrants as a threat to the country.’[6]

As indicated in European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) 2022 report on Hungary, the integration of international protection beneficiaries relies solely on national laws. This may be attributed to the fact that there has been no outlined integration plan adopted, although the Hungarian Migration Strategy had advocated for that, and that the specialized integration assistance program – providing various supports, such as monthly allowance, assistance with school enrolment, and financial aid for housing for up to two years – was terminated in 2016.[7]

Keeping in mind the complete withdrawal of the state from the integration of beneficiaries of international protection, we discuss the content of international protection as follows.