The European Court of Justice ruled today that Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary broke the EU law by refusing to take part in the mechanism of taking in migrants, which was forced on the countries of the EU by the European Commission. However, the Polish government’s spokesman, Piotr Mueller, stated that the ruling won’t mean anything in reality, as the relocation decisions expired in September 2017 and their completion is impossible today.
The European Court of Justice ruled that Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary broke EU rules by refusing to take part in the mandatory EU migrant relocation quota system adopted by the EU in 2015. According to the law, EU countries were to relieve Italy and Greece by taking in 40 thousand people from Africa and the Middle East seeking asylum, and then 120 thousand. Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary did not agree to these conditions due to public security reasons. Another reason was the fact that EU treaties leave the decision-making on migration policy to the governments of member states. What’s more, the three countries stated that it was impossible to verify the migrants’ identities and whether there could be Islamist terrorists among them. Nonetheless, the European Court of Justice dismissed all these arguments and agreed with the European Commission which had sued the three Central Eastern European member states. In the justification of its ruling, the Court of Justice stated that member states have no right to use concern for public order and security as an argument for not participating in the forced relocation mechanism.