EU court rejects effort to annul refugee plan

Several countries see quotas forced on them

BUDAPEST, Hungary — The European Union’s top court on Wednesday rejected legal action by Hungary and Slovakia seeking to avoid accepting refugees under an Eu-wide plan.

In a long-awaited test case, the European Court of Justice said it had “dismissed in its entirety the actions brought by Slovakia and Hungary.”

Human rights group Amnesty International welcomed the ruling, saying Hungary and Slovakia had been trying to turn their countries into “refugee-free zones.”

Greece and Italy have been on the front line of the torrent of migrants and refugees flooding into Europe in the last few years, as hundreds of thousands of people from war zones like Syria and Iraq, along with job-seekers coming mostly from Africa, have arrived on their shores.

EU nations agreed in September 2015 to relocate 160,000 refugees from Greece and Italy over two years, but only around 27,700 people have been moved so far, according to figures released Wednesday. Hungary and Slovakia were seeking to have the plan annulled.

Hungary and Poland have refused to take part altogether, while Slovakia has accepted only a handful of refugees from Greece.

The refugee-sharing plan was adopted by a “qualified majority” EU vote — around two-thirds of the bloc’s members — and the court held that this was appropriate, saying the EU “was not required to act unanimously” on this decision.

The court noted the small number of relocations so far is due to factors that the EU could not have foreseen, including “the lack of cooperation on the part of certain member states.”

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called the court ruling “outrageous and irresponsible.”

“The decision puts at risk the security of all of Europe and the future of all of Europe as well,” Szijjarto said, calling the ruling “contrary to the interests of the European nations, including Hungary.”

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico said he respected the court decision, but that his government still does not like the relocation plan, which he and others in Eastern Europe see as quotas imposed on them by unelected EU bureaucrats in Brussels.

“We fully respect the verdict of the European Court of Justice,” Fico told reporters, adding that his government’s negative stance on the relocation plan “has not changed at all.”

Despite the court ruling, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said her country will stick by its refusal to take in refugees.

“This absolutely does not change the position of the Polish government with respect to migration policy,” she said.

The European Commission has already launched an “infringement procedure” against the three nations for failing to take, or not recently accepting, refugees who have arrived in Italy and Greece in the last two years.