Hungary Top Court Rejects Petition to Scrap ‘Stop Soros’ Law

(Bloomberg) -- Hungary’s top court rejected a petition by the human rights group Amnesty International to invalidate a controversial law that criminalizes helping “illegal” immigration.

The Constitutional Court, in a ruling published Thursday, said existing legislation including the constitution offered sufficient guarantees that the law would not be too broadly interpreted, as its critics have argued. The law allows authorities to seek a prison sentence of up to a year against those who help organize or finance “illegal immigration.”

Prime Minister Viktor Orban pushed what he called the “Stop Soros” law through parliament after winning a third consecutive term last year. Orban had run a virulent anti-immigration campaign targeting the Hungarian-born U.S. investor-philanthropist George Soros. The European Union’s executive has started legal proceedings against Hungary because it deems the legislation incompatible with the bloc’s norms.

To contact the reporter on this story: Zoltan Simon in Budapest at zsimon@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey, Andras Gergely

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