The case concerned two Iranian applicant, a father and his minor child, who entered the Röszke transit zone and applied for asylum on 5 December 2018. The asylum authority rejected the application as inadmissible and considered that Serbia was a safe third country where the applicants should have requested asylum. The decision was confirmed in court. Consequently, the applicants were kept in the Röszke transit zone pending their return to Serbia and the father did not receive food from the authorities from the 27 March 2019 until 29 March 2019 when the ECtHR adopted an interim measure under Rule 39 and ordered the Government to provide food during the stay in the transit zone.

By action of 16 August 2019, the applicants contested before national courts the fact that they were placed in transit zone in a de facto detention and were not moved to an open accommodation facility. Based on questions submitted by the national court to the CJEU, the later ruled on 14 May 2020 in the case  FMS and Others v Országos Idegenrendeszeti Főigazgatóság Dél-alföldi Regionális Igazgatóság and Országos Idegenrendeszeti Főigazgatóság (C-924/19 C-925/19),

As a result, by decision of 22 March 2022, the Szeged Regional Court ruled that the asylum authority had acted unlawfully, by failing to designate the applicants’ place of stay outside the transit zone. The national court stated that the applicants’ placement in the transit zone pending the asylum proceedings and the alien policing procedure were unlawful in the absence of a formal reasoned detention order and in view of the lack of legal remedies.

Based on a renewed asylum application of December 2019, the applicants were granted refugee status on 11 August 2021. The applicants stayed in the transit zone until 20 May 2020, when the Hungarian authorities closed it.

The applicants complained before the ECtHR that their placement in the transit zone was contrary to Article 3 and 8 of the Convention, separately and jointly with Article 13 of the Convention.

The court mentioned that the case concerning the second applicant, who was a minor of 9 years old is similar to the case of R.R. and others v Hungary where the court found a violation of Article 3 due to the conditions to which the applicants’ children were subjected during their almost four-months-long stay in the Röszke transit zone and stated that there has been a violation of Article 3 ECHR.

For the first applicant, the court reiterated that he was left without food for 3 days while being in the deportation section of the transit zone. The court found a violation of Article 3 because, by refusing to give the first applicant food, the authorities failed to have due regard to the state of dependency in which he lived during this period. 

With regard to the placement of the applicant in the transit zone, the court found a violation fo Article 5 of the Convention and based its findings of the ruling of the Szeged Regional Court which found on 22 March 2022 that the applicants’ expulsion detention was unlawful and that they had no legal remedies available.