Helsinki File: Extradition to Hungary

In recent years, detention conditions in Hungary have attracted increasing international attention. This has further intensified following the 2024 extradition of a non-binary German defendant. However, the German Federal Constitutional Court deemed the extradition unlawful due to the risks of inhumane and degrading treatment in Hungarian detention facilities.

The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) carried out a periodic visit to Hungary in May 2023. The recently published report on the visit highlights several issues, also raised by the HHC, which undermine humane detention in Hungary. In particular, the Committee identified ill-treatment by police and prison staff as a critical issue that remains unresolved in the country.

Despite rulings by the European Court of Human Rights and repeated calls by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe over the past 13 years, Hungary still fails to tackle prison overcrowding and inhumane detention conditions. As a result, large-scale rights violations persist.

The Criminal Justice Programme of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) drafted a comprehensive response to the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency’s (FRA) FRANET research network’s Hungarian focal point touching upon 18 topics related to Criminal Detention in the European Union: Conditions and Monitoring.

Nine years after the European Court of Human Rights condemned Hungary for violating the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment due to its prison conditions, detainees continue to face substandard living conditions that fall short … Read more

Hungary has failed to implement judgments of the European Court of Human Rights that established large-scale rights violations concerning detention conditions. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee has expressed concern several times regarding the recent surge in the number of persons detained in Hungarian penitentiaries, which led to overcrowding and substandard detention conditions. Additionally, evidence is provided by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) that there is still a lack of effective remedy for prisoners against decisions taken in the prison system, along with the compensation system suffering from several shortcomings already clearly identified by the Committee of Ministers.

Prisoners are just as vulnerable to insect bites as others living in closed institutions.

The Justice Programme of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee prepared the following submission for the upcoming periodic visit of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) Our submission focuses … Read more

Hungarian prisons are overcrowded again, with the highest prison population in 33 years. The steady increase is worrying: on 31 December 2022, there were more than 19 thousand incarcerated people in Hungary, leaving the prison … Read more

The HHC submitted a communication to the Committee of Ministers on the execution of a 2015 pilot judgment on inadequate detention conditions in Hungarian prisons and the remaining issues of the related compensation system. The … Read more

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee contributed to the project “Fighting unconscious bias and discrimination of Roma people in the criminal justice system”, which started in 2018, as a partner. The transnational project was coordinated by the Fair … Read more