3 countries breached EU law over asylum-seekers

BRUSSELS

The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland all breached EU law by failing to relocate asylum-seekers to their soil, the European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday.

"By refusing to comply with the temporary mechanism for the relocation of applicants for international protection, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have failed to fulfil their obligations under European Union law," said the court ruling.

"Those Member States can rely neither on their responsibilities concerning the maintenance of law and order and the safeguarding of internal security, nor on the alleged malfunctioning of the relocation mechanism to avoid implementing that mechanism," it stressed.

In September 2015 European ministers adopted a resolution on the temporary relocation of 120,000 asylum-seekers from Greece and Italy to other EU member states in order to ease the pressure on local authorities.

EU member states were supposed to relocate a certain number of asylum-seeker based on the given country’s size and economic situation – for example, Hungary’s quota was 1,294 people.

Despite the compulsory nature of the decision, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic did not participate in the relocation program.

Poland and Hungary argued that asylum-seekers posed a risk to national security and public order, while the Czech Republic reasoned that the relocation program was not working in other countries either.

After the European Commission launched an infringement procedure against the countries, the European Court of Justice ruled against them, saying that they had breached EU law.

In theory, the three countries are now obliged to execute the decision, but this is no longer possible, as the situation of the 120,000 asylum-seekers has since been resolved.

In a separate procedure, the European Commission can ask the court to impose financial sanctions on the three states.