The Hungarian domestic court posed two questions to the CJEU, essentially asking whether the application of Article 4 of Council Directive 2004/83/EC, in the light of Article 1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU Charter), precludes forensic psychologists’ expert opinions based on projective personality tests from being used in asylum adjudication relating to LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex) claimants.
The case concerns a Nigerian national who had submitted an application for international protection in Hungary based on his sexual orientation, and dealt with the use of projective personality tests and other means for ‘proving’ sexuality. The most recent incident came to the public knowledge through a reference for a preliminary ruling to the CJEU by the Hungarian Administrative and Labour Court Szeged on 29 August 2016 in the Case C ‑ 473/16, F v Bevándorlási és Menekültügyi Hivatal (the ‘F case’). It was already public knowledge that this category of claimants was subjected to poor treatment by the Hungarian authorities, but recent events suggest that the authorities have reached a new low. Building on extremely hostile policies towards refugees that have been admonished by both the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Hungarian authorities now intend to resort to highly dubious means to assess the applications of individuals claiming asylum on grounds related to their sexual orientation. The most recent reason for alarm again relates to migration and refugees, an area of widespread criticism of Hungarian authorities. From legislation targeting ‘foreign-operating universities’ to border walls to keep refugees from entering Hungarian territory, the populist right-wing government of Viktor Orban has been sparking outrage in many sectors of Hungarian society, and the European institutions.
Hungary has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons for quite a while.