How long will Hungary’s migration emergency remain in force?

Hungary’s migration emergency has remained in place since 2015, giving the state extraordinary powers under the special legal order. The question of how long it will continue is now tied to negotiations with the European Commission and the arrival of a new European Union migration framework.

The Court of Justice of the European Union imposed a daily fine of 1 million euros on Hungary during the Orbán government, ruling that Hungarian regulations conflicted with the EU’s position. The accumulated penalty has now exceeded 900 million euros.

In background talks with the European Commission, Brussels is pressing Hungary to end the emergency and allow refugees to submit applications again at the Hungarian border. That would remove the earlier system under which applications were submitted through embassies.

The EU’s new Migration and Asylum Pact came into force in the summer of 2026, creating a fundamentally different legal environment across the bloc. Hungary’s current government, led by Péter Magyar and Tisza, says it is unfair to continue penalising the country for violating an earlier and outdated set of rules after the legal framework has changed so substantially.