UPDATE - European court orders Hungary to pay $216M over ‘serious infringement ‘of asylum rules

UPDATES WITH HUNGARIAN PREMIER'S REMARKS; CHANGES DECK

By Ahmet Gencturk

ATHENS (AA) - The Court of Justice of the EU on Thursday ordered Hungary to pay a lump sum of €200 million ($216 million) over "serious infringement" of the bloc’s asylum rules.

In a statement, the court said that it also ordered Hungary to pay a penalty payment of €1 million 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," it added.

Commenting on the judgement on X, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called it outrageous and unacceptable.

"It seems that illegal #migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens," he said.