The applicants, an Afghan family, mother father and four minor children, stayed at the Röszke transit zone at the border of Hungary and Serbia between 30 March 2017 and 24 October 2017. They applied for asylum in Hungary and were rejected on 5 May 2017. Further to their request for judicial review, the Immigration and Asylum Office (“the IAO”) reconsidered the case of its own motion and rejected their asylum requests again on 15 June 2017.

The Szeged Administrative and Labour Court quashed the IAO’s decision on 16 August 2017. It also quashed the ruling designating the Röszke transit zone as the applicants’ place of accommodation due to insufficient reasoning. Subsequently, on 22 September 2017, the IAO modified the reasoning of that decision by stating that the applicants did not have special needs that could not been taken care of in the transit zone. On 20 October 2017 the applicants were granted refugee status. On 24 October 2017 they were transferred to the Vámosszabadi Reception Centre. On 28 October 2017 the applicants left Hungary.

In the Röszke transit zone the applicants stayed in the family section, where they were housed in one container with a separate bed and a wardrobe for each one of them. The applicants complained of the conditions in the Röszke transit zone as described R.R. and others (Iran and Afghanistan) v Hungary, 2 March 2021. In addition to describing the general conditions, the applicant alleged that the applicant father suffered from impaired hearing, back pain and mental-health problems but was given only painkillers.

The applicants complained that the conditions of their confinement in the Röszke transit zone had been incompatible with the guarantees of Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention. Under Article 13 in conjunction with Article 3 of the Convention they complained that there had been no effective remedy to complain about those conditions. Moreover, they complained that they had been detained in the transit zone in violation of Article 5 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention.

The Court has already considered that the living conditions in the Röszke transit zone in terms of accommodation, hygiene and access to food and medical care were generally acceptable for holding asylum-seekers for a limited period of time. Although the adult applicants in the present case stayed in the transit zone for almost seven months, the Court found that the evidence does not indicate that the adult applicants were more vulnerable than any other adult asylum seeker confined to the transit zone and that the otherwise acceptable conditions in the transit zone were particularity ill-suited in their circumstances.

The Court concluded that the threshold of severity required for Article 3 has not been attained and rejected the claim as manifestly unfounded. With regard to detention, the applicants’ complaint that they had been confined to the transit zone in violation of Article 5 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention is similar to the one examined in the case R.R. and Others, where the Court found that the applicants’ stay for almost four months in the transit zone amounted to a de facto deprivation of liberty.

The Court considered that the situation is similar, in view of the relevant circumstances and concludes that there has been a violation of Article 5 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention in the light of its findings in R.R. and Others.