The European Court of Justice approves mandatory asylum quotas
The European Court of Justice rejects the lawsuit from Slovakia and Hungary against the order in which the EU has imposed them to accept asylum seekers from Greece and Italy.
This entails that the controversial asylum quotas are legal.
The EU has decided that Hungary must receive 1,294 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy, while Slovakia must take 902.
The decision has not been received with a light heart by the two countries. Both voted against the quotas. When a majority of the EU member states approved the scheme regardless, Hungary and Slovakia went to court to annul the decision.
The European Court of Justice now concludes that it does not see anything “obviously inappropriate” in the quota decision.
The EU’s aim has been to relocate a total of 160,000 people to relieve the countries under greatest pressure when hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants came to Europe during the crisis in 2015.
Reluctance across the board
Asylum quotas were adopted in 2015, and relocalisation should originally occur during two years until September of this year. But efforts have been slow, and several countries have been very reluctant to accept asylum seekers.
Hungary has not yet received one single asylum seeker through the scheme. This applies to Poland as well. Slovakia has so far at least received 16 asylum seekers.
Norway has volunteered to accept 1,500 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy. The last of these came to Norway this summer.
© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today
