Hungary, Poland Lose EU Court Challenge Over Refugee Quotas

(Bloomberg) -- The European Union won a boost for its refugee policy after the bloc’s top court said Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic failed to comply with a decision to shelter refugees in line with national quotas.

The three countries “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,” the EU Court of Justice said in binding rulings on Thursday.

The European Commission in 2017 took the three nations to court for failing to comply with decisions two years earlier for EU nations to relocate or resettle migrants mostly via Italy and Greece, which have borne the brunt of arrivals in the biggest influx of asylum seekers to Europe since World War II. The three countries were among the loudest critics against the EU decision.

The EU’s national quotas system won the backing of the bloc’s top court in a separate ruling in 2017, in which it rejected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s bid to have the quota decision annulled.

Polish officials downplayed the ruling as insignificant.

“The ruling won’t have any practical meaning as relocation decisions expired in 2017 and can’t be implemented” Cabinet spokesman Piotr Muller told PAP newswire.

The cases are: C-715/17 European Commission v. Republic of Poland, C-718/17 European Commission v. Hungary, C-719/17 European Commission v. Czech Republic.

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