Hungary fights EU refugee relocation plans at top EU court

Bloomberg

Hungary’s fight against European Union rules favoring a quota system to relocate refugees is being reviewed by the bloc’s top court in what could end up in a political blow to Prime Minister Viktor Orban and a boost to stalled efforts for a European asylum system. “Hungary can’t identify with a view purporting that the only or necessary way to have inter-EU solidarity would be a system imposing the obligatory relocation of” asylum seekers between member nations, Miklos Feher, a lawyer for the Hungarian government, told judges at the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg on Wednesday. “The decision which was adopted in 13 days, didn’t even solve the crisis caused by the sudden influx.”
The contested 2015 EU decision sought to deal with a migration crisis that left nations such as Italy and Greece, key entry points to the EU, overwhelmed by an estimated 3,000 new arrivals every day during the summer of that year.
Hungary and Slovakia, which is also fighting the plans in the EU court, said the decision was “unacceptable.” Orban has been the staunchest opponent of an open-door policy in the EU, building a fence around his country’s southern border, rounding up asylum seekers in container camps and openly rejecting a
decision by the bloc to allocate a set number of refugees by
national quotas.