Brussels leaders trying to play it tough treat Hungary as a miscreant and want to send it off to the "sin bin”, Pál Völner, State Secretary at the Justice Ministry said in response to the article published in the conservative British newspaper The Times on 4 April 2017.

According to the conservative newspaper’s information, France, Germany and 21 other EU Member States will serve an ultimatum on Hungary and Poland before the end of this year, pursuant to which they will either accept the resettlement quotas of migrants falling on them, or they will have to leave the European Union.

Mr Völner reiterated: the Hungarian Government turned to the Court of Justice of the European Union in December 2015, and requested the annulment of the mandatory mechanism seeking to relocate migrants which EU Home Ministers approved with a qualified majority vote despite Hungary’s protest a few months earlier. Slovakia turned to the court with a similar petition, and Poland also joined later.

The State Secretary told the Hungarian news agency MTI that statements such as those that are published in the article of the British newspaper grossly violate the independence of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The suspicion emerges that this is how they want to "entice” the court "into the migrant business”, he said.

According to the State Secretary, the open exertion of political pressure is evidently also demonstrated by virtue of the fact that the petition was submitted by Hungary and Slovakia, while they only mention the former and Poland in the article, despite the fact that the latter is only an intervening party to the proceedings.

He added that Austria is likewise not mentioned which signed the decision on the mandatory quotas, but later indicated that it is not prepared to take in refugees.

Mr Völner reiterated that the Hungarian and Slovak petition submitted against the EU programme which is aimed at the relocation of asylum-seekers will be heard on 10 May. The judgement will not be announced on the day of the hearing, but at a later date, in writing.

(MTI)