The must-have newsletter about Hungary

GOVT: EC STILL WANTS MIGRANTS IN HUNGARY

 

The outgoing European Commission still insists on moving migrants to Hungary but the government maintains that Hungary does not want either a permanent or a one-off mandatory quota, a justice ministry official has said.

In an opinion published on Thursday, Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Eleanor Sharpston said that the CJEU “should rule that, by refusing to comply with the provisional and time-limited mechanism for the mandatory relocation of applicants for international protection, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have failed to fulfil their obligations under EU law.”
In response to Sharpston’s opinion, state secretary Pál Völner told MTI that the EC had brought action against Hungary because the country refused to fulfil “the one-time mandatory quota forced through by stealth” in 2015 which would have made the country receive 1,294 migrants. Hungary turned to the CJEU, disputing the legality of the quota ruling, Völner said. The CJEU rejected Hungary’s and Slovakia’s legal actions in September 2017, he added.
The Hungarian government “has certainly not moved in migrants ever since because the deadline for the implementation of the quota ruling expired and its execution cannot be forced through with retroactive effect,” he said.