46 the camp, where very few asylum seekers can (GCR) won objections against detention for an be seen and where almost no sounds of asylum seeker who was prohibited from conversation – or life – are heard. On Samos, exiting the Samos CCAC. In that case, the Amnesty International has already reported administrative court accepted GCR’s argument that restrictive nature of the CCACs have had a that the applicant’s exit ban amounted to de- “devastating impact on the mental and facto detention because he could not leave the physical well-being of CCAC residents, many of CCAC and ordered the authorities to lift it.132 whom report symptoms of depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts”130 However, for those who can leave, determining whether the CCAC indeed amounts to 7. Unstable procedures and arbitrary practices detention requires an extensive legal analysis The camp management practices change Although there is not caselaw addressing the almost daily, and lawyers working on the precise question yet, the CJEU and ECtHR’s ground consider the situation to be unstable handling of the Hungarian transit zones may and often arbitrary. As the summer offer some, although limited, insight. In approaches, advocates fear that the camp finding that the Röszke Transit Zone did authorities will impose further restrictions on amount to detention, the CJEU noted that the asylum seekers to separate them from tourists, facility “is surrounded by a high fence and a fear based on former experience. However, to barbed wire” and that “police officers or armed be in accordance with a fundamental principle guards are permanently present inside and of the rule of law, the way laws are applied outside the transit zone and in the immediate must be foreseeable. vicinity of that fence.”133 However, the CJEU that is outside the scope of this report. also emphasized, in particular, that the 8. Legal Assessment applicants could not leave the transit zone for For groups who cannot leave the facility at all, another area in Hungary,134 and that any such as unregistered asylum seekers and attempt to leave the transit zone would either UAMs, accommodation in the CCAC clearly put them at risk of ill treatment in Serbia or amounts to a deprivation of liberty and losing their right to continue their asylum therefore de facto detention, procedure in Hungary.135 Additionally, the 131 and in December 2021 the Greek Council for Refugees Amnesty International, One year since Greece opened new “prison-like” refugee camps, NGOs call for a more humane approach (19 September 2022), available at: https://bit.ly/3jPgygU. 131 Here we rely on the definition provided by the Reception Conditions Directive that defines detention as “confinement of an applicant by a Member State within a particular place, where the applicant is deprived of his or her freedom of movement.” Art. 2(h) Directive 2013/33/EU. For further analysis see Hruschka/Nestler/Rohmann, European Law and Human Rights Requirements for the Reception of Asylum Seekers in the Border Procedures - Deprivation of Liberty and Living 130 Conditions, 2021, available at: https://bityl.co/Go4d. 132 Greek Council for Refugees, The Administrative Court of Syros ruled unlawful the measure of prohibiting the exit of an Afghan asylum seeker from the new Closed Controlled Access Facility of Samos (CCF Samos) (22 December 2021), available at: https://bit.ly/3HysixI. 133 Judgment of 14/05/2020 - C-924/19 PPU and C925/19 PPU - FMS et al, para. 68. Para 68 134 CJEU, Judgment of 14/05/2020 - C-924/19 PPU and C-925/19 PPU - FMS et al, para. 70. 135 CJEU, Judgment of 14/05/2020 - C-924/19 PPU and C-925/19 PPU - FMS et al, para. 230. ‘Still detained and forgotten’ – Update on Detention Policies, Practices, and Conditions on Kos 2022/23