“The Hungarian Government can expect further legal disputes with relation to the mandatory resettlement quota, and continues to represent the standpoint according to which only people who are allowed to do so based on the decision of the authorities may enter Hungary”, Chief Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, György Bakondi said on Hungarian M1 television’s Wednesday evening current affairs program.

Mr. Bakondi was reacting to the fact that the European Court of Justice rejected the joint Hungarian and Slovakian plea against the EU mechanism of distributing asylum-seekers among member states.

According to Mr. Bakondi, the reasoning behind the ruling “is extremely shaky, from both a legal and factual perspective” in view of the fact that “only 25 percent of those who should have been resettled according to the quota decision have actually been resettled”, and accordingly “the decision has been a failure in practice”, Mr. Bakondi declared.

“The ruling does not result in any legal obligation for any country”, he said, adding that the next step will be taken by the European Commission, which has launched infringement proceedings against Hungary without even waiting for the Court’s decision, and which can go to court if it decides that the arguments put forward by Hungary in its reply are not valid.

“The decision on the mandatory resettlement quota expires on 26 September, and further legal disputes are expected concerning whether it must still be implemented following the deadline.

Budapest and Bratislava turned to the European Court of Justice in December 2015 with regard to the mandatory mechanism aimed at resettling 120 thousand asylum-seekers, which the Council of EU Interior Ministers adopted in the autumn of 2015 with only a qualified majority, despite opposition from several member states, including Hungary and Slovakia.

(MTI)