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POLAND, HUNGARY, AND the Czech Republic broke EU law by refusing refugees when the bloc faced a migration crisis five years ago, the European Court of Justice has ruled.
By ignoring an EU effort to share out refugees across the bloc, they “failed to fulfil their obligations under European Union law,” the ECJ held, opening the way for possible fines.
The case was brought by the European Commission after Warsaw, Budapest and Prague refused to apply a relocation mechanism decided by EU leaders to distribute 120,000 asylum-seekers in Greece and Italy.
The migration emergency eased the following year when the European Union struck a deal with Turkey to block the passage of most migrants towards the EU in exchange for billions of euros.
Most of the more than a million migrants who sought refuge in Europe in 2015 were Syrians fleeing civil war.
Turkey, in February, reopened access to its borders with neighbouring EU states Greece and Bulgaria for asylum-seekers as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sought to pressure Europe to help him out with his military operation in northern Syria.
Greece responded by reinforcing security along its borders and refusing asylum applications in March, sparking an outcry by rights groups and the United Nations.
After frantic diplomacy by EU heavyweights France and Germany, as well as former EU member Britain, Turkey last month ordered land borders closed to refugees once more, according to an interior ministry circular cited by the Dogan news agency.
Responding to Thursday’s verdict, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said “this ruling is important. It is referring to the past but it will give us guidance to the future”.
All three European countries played down their defeat.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis told state news agency CTK: “We lost but that’s not important – the important thing is we don’t have to pay anything.”
He also said: “the fundamental thing is that we will not take in any migrant and that the quotas have since disappeared, and that is largely thanks to us.”
Hungary’s justice minister, Judith Vargas, slammed the court’s “discriminatory” stance, while Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller asserted that the verdict “won’t have any practical importance”.
The ECJ said it weighed counter-arguments by the three states but found them lacking.
“Those member states can rely neither on their responsibilities concerning the maintenance of law and order and the safeguarding of internal security, nor on the alleged malfunctioning of the relocation mechanism to avoid implementing that mechanism,” it said.
The court noted that Poland broke a promise to take in 100 migrants under the obligatory relocation mechanism, the Czech Republic took in just 12 of 50 migrants it pledged to host, and Hungary simply did not offer any number it would take.
The court also rejected an argument to dismiss by the three countries on the basis that the compulsory European Council order had expired in September 2017.
It said determining whether they were in infringement made the case admissible and laid the groundwork for the EU, member states or individuals to later demand compensatory action including possible fines.
Years after the 2015 migration emergency, the EU is still searching for a workable, bloc-wide solution to revise its system to vet and host refugees
Some member states, France and Germany chief among them, are edging towards a durable relocation mechanism taking the pressure off countries such as Greece.
However, they face persistent obstinance by countries mostly on the EU’s eastern rim.
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In my opinion: I think if you present yourself to a hospital with flu like symptoms or flu in general and have not seen your GP or Caredoc services you should incur a whopper of a bill. Say €1000 regardless of VHI LAYA or medical card. I think that would surely stop people in there tracks. Going to the hospital so they can look down your gob feel your glands and tell you to rest and take paracetamol is a waste of time.
@Tom Harpur: Good man Tom , charge those tax payers even more .
Try get an appointment with your doctor , we can fit you in next Thursday .
@Tom Harpur: you don’t understand the nature of true influenza and its particular dangers for a number of categories of vulnerable persons. Patients are only admitted as a last resort. In A&E, patients with symptoms of influenza are triaged and usually treated as very low priority unless the symptoms indicate secondary infections and dangerous morbidities.
@Ken Hayden: if you can’t get a appointment with your doctor go to your out of hours doctor. No need to block up A&E just because you have a sniffle or sore throat
@Fiona deFreyne: I understand too well the true definition and feeling of influenza I’ve had it plus I’m in the at risk category so I get the jab. The last port of call should be the Emergency department for this if it’s bad you should be referred by your GP or out of hours doctor service.
@Tom Harpur: well said and people not at risk whose health is usually good – just get to bed – keep hydrated and stop spreading the love.
@Tom Harpur: Try to ring out of hours service in Dublin. You’ll get a fax machine. Search on google and you’ll see reviews from 2015 complaining about the same thing (phone number officially advertised is actually a fax number). Plenty of time to fix this if they actually cared about their services.
And we wonder you people are going to A&E for a flu.
@Tom Harpur: Normally anyone ending up in A&E with flu has other complications. The flu can be a very serious and even fatal illness, if you’ve certain underlying problems and also for some elderly people.
If more of us got flu vaccines, fewer of us would develop flu and the virus wouldn’t spread around so much. We might have something approaching herd immunity every year.
For the sake of 2 seconds of minor inconvenience, you educate your own immune system to kill off a nasty virus and avoid a ton of problems yourself and you won’t pass it on to someone vulnerable!
Are they not just piling on more pressure after Christmas with this rescheduling? Surely there’s procedures already booked in for those times in the new year.
More of the same.
National embarrassment
Nothing to do with all the consultants being off for 2 weeks No?
@PDiddy: How do you know consultants are off for two weeks? Can you name your sources? Oh I see, you are just talking through your backside.
If this was Ryanair we’d be kicking up a stink . Keep the recovery going , playground for the globalists
@Ken Hayden: What do you expect the hospitals to do in the current situation? Hospitals simply don’t have the resources, staff are taking measures that they know will help them get through such a busy period with minimum impact on patient survival.
Kick up a stink at the state and the fact that CUH were even put in this position, not at CUH itself.
@Veronica: (A) what is the current situation (B) have we not had Christmas season before .
Why can a hospital not foresee these problems , where do we live .
@Veronica: I’m not blaming the staff , I’m sure they do their best .
I am blaming the overlords , the admin , who control the money .
@Veronica: do we even have 1 hospital in the actual country ‘with the resources’ ? even 1 – it’s a lame excuse every single time from government who take our taxes but fail to use them appropriately
Ah, ye old revelry. Prefer Tomfoolery myself.
Ireland is a Third WWold country.
Ireland is a failed state.
Young people need to be told that there is no future for them here.
Foreign direct investment into the failed state of Ireland is very foolish.
@Colin Morris: 1.4 million medical cards and half a million GP cards. That’s a lot of people not contributing.
@lavbeer: that’s a very sweeping statement….. I have a medical card as I have an autoimmune disease, I still work full time and pay my taxes and ‘contribute’ as you put it.
Irish hospital caught unawares by flu outbreak in Winter flu season.
This so-called ‘Aussie flu’ really sucks and especially as it seems to hang in there. Can understand that people with breathing problems will feel it more as it is really effin awful from the lungs up to the throat so good idea to shift patient emphasis for a while.
have your say