EC conducting ‘show trial’ against Hungary over migrant quotas, says government official

A justice ministry official on Thursday said the European Commission was conducting a “show trial” against Hungary over the issue of migrant distribution quotas, arguing that the EC had not launched infringement procedures against all member states that have refused to comply with the scheme.

Justice ministry state secretary Pál Völner told a press conference that the reason why the EC had launched an infringement procedure against Hungary was because it holds the strongest position on the issue and has even gone so far as to challenge the quota scheme in court.

Hungary turned to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) together with Slovakia over the quota scheme in December 2015 after EU interior ministers had voted in September to implement a mandatory quota system to redistribute 120,000 refugees among EU member states.

The EC has also launched infringement procedures against Poland and the Czech Republic for failing to implement the EU decision on migrant quotas.

Völner said that a number of EU member states had failed to honour their commitments to take in migrants. Some countries took in a significantly fewer number of people than they had promised while others had not taken in any at all, he said. As a result, EU countries have only taken in 11.8 percent of the number of migrants they had originally agreed on, Völner added.

As we wrote today, European Commission launches infringement procedure against Hungary over NGO transparency law, and EC also steps up infringement procedure over higher education law against Hungary.

Source: MTI