Blow to easterners’ refugee battle

EU court backs deportations by Austria, Slovenia

LUXEMBOURG, July 26, (Agencies): The top European Union court’s adviser on Wednesday dismissed a challenge brought by Slovakia and Hungary against the obligatory relocation of refugees across the bloc, dealing a blow to the easterners’ migration battles that upset their EU peers.

The two states — backed by their neighbour Poland — wanted the court to annul a 2015 EU scheme to have each member state host a number of refugees to help ease pressure on Greece and Italy, struggling with mass arrivals across the Mediterranean.

But the court’s Advocate General Yves Bot rejected the procedural arguments presented by Bratislava and Budapest that obligatory quotas were unlawful.

“The contested decision automatically helps to relieve the considerable pressure on the asylum systems of Italy and Greece following the migration crisis in the summer of 2015 and ... is thus appropriate for attaining the objective which it pursues,” he said.

A final ECJ ruling is expected after the summer break. The court does not have to but generally does follow the advisory opinion of the Advocate General.

The nationalist-minded, eurosceptic governments in Warsaw and Budapest have refused to take in a single asylum-seeker under the plan. Slovakia and the Czech Republic have also stalled, citing security concerns after a raft of Islamist attacks in the EU in recent years.

Their reluctance to help the two southern frontline states, as well as wealthier EU countries such as Germany, which has taken in hundreds of thousands of migrants, have precipitated bitter disputes in the bloc and

The three government ministers are blamed for incompetence and delaying the release of information. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who described the leak as a disaster that put Sweden and Swedes in harm’s way, said he first heard about it in January — some 18 months after the leak occurred. weakened its unity.

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said in a statement his government was sticking to its decision to refuse mandatory quotas and called the Advocate General’s opinion “non binding”.

Hungary dismissed the ruling as politically motivated.

“The main elements of the statement are political, which are practically used to disguise the fact that there are no legal arguments in it,” Pal Volner, state secretary of the Justice Ministry, was cited as saying by the state news agency MTI.

The bloc’s executive Commission last month launched legal cases against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for defaulting on their legal obligations.

It stepped the cases up on Wednesday, while EU’s Migration Commission Dimitris Avramopoulos welcomed the court’s advisory opinion

Juistify

“None of the arguments they put forward justify that they don’t implement the relocation decision,” he said.

The European Commission said on Wednesday that some 24,700 people had been moved from Greece and Italy under the plan that had been due to cover 160,000.

Meanwhile, the EU’s top court on Wednesday backed decisions by Austria and Slovenia to deport asylum seekers back to Croatia at the height of the European migrant crisis in 2015.

With its ruling, the European Court of Justice upheld the EU’s controversial Dublin rule, whereby would-be refugees must file for asylum in the first bloc member-state they enter.

In 2015 more than 850,000 people

Officials say they do not know if the leak caused any tangible damage. The head of the Transport Agency was fired in January for negligence and waiving security clearance requirements for some foreign IT workers, Swedish reports said.

“Several ministers have neglected their

This image grab taken from handout video footage released on July 25, by the Spanish Police shows Spanish Police apprehending a man armed with a knife at the Beni Anzar border crossing between Morocco and the Spanish territory of Melilla. ‘A man entered the border post and once inside, pulled out a large knife and confronted (police) shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is Greater), slightly injuring a policeman’, Irene Flores, spokeswoman for the central government’s

representative office in Melilla, told AFP. (AFP)

— most of them fleeing conflict in war-ravaged Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — crossed the so-called Balkan route to reach mainly Germany after it opened its doors to asylum seekers.

A group of asylum seekers filed a lawsuit arguing that the 2015 migration crisis had created exceptional circumstances, in effect suspending Dublin rules.

Croatian authorities had bussed the asylum seekers, who originally arrived from non-EU Serbia, to the border with Slovenia so they could make applications in other member states.

Activists hoped the European Union court would uphold the asylum seekers’ arguments, and thereby force a change to the highly contested Dublin rules that critics see as an unfair burden on southern and poorer EU nations such as Greece, Italy and Croatia.

But the court backed Austria and Slovenia’s decision to send the asylum seekers back to Croatia, finding that “such a conclusion would be incompatible with the Dublin regulation,” a statement announcing the decision said.

Thus, “a member state which has decided on humanitarian grounds to authorise the entry on its territory of a non-EU national who does not have a visa ... cannot be absolved of that responsiblity,” it said.

Germany’s initial decision to waive the so-called Dublin rules drew sharp criticism from EU partners who feared the migrant wave into Europe.

The asylum rule is currently suspended for Greece, which together with Italy has been the main point of entry for the more than one million migrants who have entered the bloc since 2015 fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

responsibilities,” opposition Center Party leader Annie Loof said, adding that they wanted “consequences” for their actions.

It was not immediately clear when the four opposition parties, known as the Alliance, would table the motion, but the vote could happen within a few weeks, opposition leaders said. (AP)

Suspect armed, but didn’t resist:

The suspect in a chainsaw attack on a health insurer’s office in Switzerland was carrying a bag with two crossbows when he was detained, but didn’t resist arrest, police and prosecutors said Wednesday.

Suspect Franz Wrousis was arrested Tuesday evening in Thalwil, a lakeside town south of Zurich and some 63 kms (nearly 40 miles) by road from the scene of Monday morning’s attack in Schaffhausen. Police said they don’t yet know how and when Wrousis got there.

The 50-year-old suspect was arrested after police was tipped off by locals. Prosecutor Peter Sticher said Wrousis was alone and on foot at the time of his arrest, and that “the arrest went without resistance — he behaved properly and cooperatively.”

Sticher said at a news conference in Schaffhausen that Wrousis was carrying a plastic bag with two loaded crossbows and two sharpened wooden slats.

Wrousis is accused of attacking two employees of a health insurance company at their office in Schaffhausen’s old town. One of them was seriously hurt, though the injuries were not considered life-threatening. Authorities are still searching for the chainsaw used in the attack. (AP)