EU dismisses bid to annul the refugee allocation plan

The European Union dismissed the motion filed by Slovakia and Hungary to annul the 2015 EU relocation plan. “The contested decision automatically helps to relieve the considerable pressure on the asylum systems of Italy and Greece following the migration crisis in the summer of 2015 and is thus appropriate for attaining the objective which it pursues,” said Yves Bot, Advocate General of the European Court of Justice said. He added that the relocation is legal because of the “clearly identified emergency situation,” meaning the issue did not need to be voted on by the European Parliament. The court will announce its ruling in the fall and generally follows the advocate general opinion. In 2015, EU leaders decided that bloc’s member states would redistribute 160,000 asylum seekers, mostly from the Middle East, among themselves in order to alleviate pressure on Greece and Italy where most of the migrants arrived. According to the EU plan, Poland is set to accept 6,200 migrants by September, and so far has not brought in a single asylum seeker. Back in June, the European Commission launched a legal case against Poland, Hungary, and Czechia for refusing to participate in the relocation plan.