They seek to secure the distribution of 160,000 refugees arriving in Italy and Greece
The Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) Eleanor Sharpston, on Thursday, recommended to the court that it declare that Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic violated European rules by not complying with the system of relocation of refugees from Italy and Greece agreed in 2015.
That year, in the face of the massive arrival of asylum seekers in these countries, the EU took two decisions to ensure the distribution among the other states of 40,000 refugees arriving on the Italian coast and 120,000 arriving at the Greek stake, in order to relieve the pressure on their rarrow.
Hungary and Slovakia appealed these decisions to the Court of Justice of the EU (ECJ), which rejected their arguments and declared the system necessary and proportionate in 2017.
In December of that year, the Commission brought Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to court on the grounds that they were violating their obligations by not committing to take any refugees.
In the opinion issued on Thursday, the Advocate General of the CJEU agrees with the Commission and stresses that these three countries cannot disobey Community law because they disagree with it by invoking their obligation to maintain order and protect their security Internal.
First, it recalls that the relocation system allows countries to refuse to take in a particular asylum seeker where there are "reasonable grounds to regard it as a danger to national security or public order" and was therefore "perfectly possible" for Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic to preserve the safety and well-being of their citizens.
In this regard, it stresses that Community legislation provides means to protect these interests, but does not simply allow legal obligations to be ignored.
"The legitimate interest of the Member States in preserving social and cultural cohesion can effectively be safeguarded by other means less restrictive than the unilateral and complete refusal to fulfil their obligations under EU law," says Lawyer according to a statement from the Court.
Second, the lawyer rejects these three countries may be exempt from participating in relocation because it was difficult to process a large number of applications and recalls that the agreed system provides mechanisms to solve these problems.
It notes in particular that other countries that had problems requested temporary suspensions of their obligations that were granted to them, so if Hungary, Poland or the Czech Republic really had difficulties this "was clearly the way forward", "instead" to unilaterally decide that it was not necessary to comply."
"In what was clearly an emergency situation, it was the responsibility of both frontline states and potential relocation States to make the mechanism work properly to alleviate intolerable pressure in the first-line States Line. That's what solidarity is all about," he says.
Finally, the Advocate General recalls that EU members must respect three principles: the rule of law, sincere cooperation and the principle of solidarity.
In this regard, he points out that non-compliance with legal obligations "when they are not well received or unpopular is a dangerous first step towards the breakdown of a society governed by the rule of law". "This bad example is particularly pernicious if a Member State feels it," he says.
He adds that the principle of solidarity "necessarily sometimes involves agreeing to share the burdens".
With the exception of Slovakia, the countries of the so-called Visegrad Group have refused to relocate asylum seekers to the EU into their territory and turned the migration issue into a political argument for attack on the Union.
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