BRUSSELS • Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke EU law by refusing refugees when the bloc faced a migration emergency five years ago, the European Court of Justice ruled yesterday.
By ignoring an EU effort to share refugees across the bloc, they "failed to fulfil their obligations under European Union law", the court held, opening the way for possible fines.
The case was brought by the European Commission after Warsaw, Budapest and Prague refused to apply a relocation mechanism decided by EU leaders to distribute 120,000 asylum-seekers in Greece and Italy.
The migration emergency eased the following year when the EU struck a deal with Turkey to block the passage of most migrants towards the EU in exchange for billions of euros.
Most of the more than one million migrants who sought refuge in Europe in 2015 were Syrians fleeing civil war.
Turkey in February reopened access to its borders with neighbouring EU states Greece and Bulgaria for asylum-seekers as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sought to pressure Europe to help him out with his military operation in northern Syria.
Greece responded by reinforcing security along its borders and refusing asylum applications last month, sparking an outcry by rights groups and the United Nations.
After frantic diplomacy by EU heavyweights France and Germany as well as former EU member Britain, Turkey last month ordered land borders closed to refugees once more, according to an interior ministry circular cited by the Dogan news agency.
The European Court of Justice said it weighed counter-arguments by the three infringing EU states but found them lacking.
"Those member states 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," it said.
The court noted that Poland broke a promise to take in 100 migrants under the obligatory relocation mechanism, the Czech Republic took in just 12 of 50 migrants it had pledged to host, and Hungary simply did not offer any number it would take.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis responded to the judgment on state news agency CTK, saying: "We lost but that's not important - the important thing is we don't have to pay anything.
"The Commission pays the legal costs."
He also said "the fundamental thing is that we will not take in any migrant and that the quotas have since disappeared, and that is largely thanks to us".
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
