Granting asylum not a constitutional obligation, court rules

Granting asylum to entrants from countries where they were not subject to persecution "cannot be considered a constitutional obligation" for the Hungarian state, the Constitutional Court said in a ruling on Thursday. The court added, however, that such entrants could be granted asylum "by parliament under its own rules". The court insisted that asylum could be granted "under Hungary's international obligations rather than as the applicant's fundamental right". The ruling came in the wake of a request by Justice Minister Laszlo Trocsanyi, who asked for the court's position in a dispute with the European Commission, according to which stipulations in the Hungarian constitution pertaining to asylum are not in line with European law.