The Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has dismissed an action brought by Slovakia and Hungary regarding the contested decision of the European Commission to adopt relocation quotas to deal with the large inflow of migrants from Non-Member State countries.
In 2015, in response to the refugee crisis, the decision was taken to implement a mandatory relocation scheme aimed at relocating 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece to other EU Member States. The original proposal saw Hungary as a third beneficiary of relocation, however, upon rejecting this, Hungary was later given a mandatory allocation. The decision was adopted under the untested emergency provision Article 78(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia voted against adoption of the proposal.
In seeking annulment of the decision, Slovakia and Hungary argued with the decision making process creating the scheme and put forward that the decision was neither a suitable response to the migrant crisis nor necessary for that purpose. The Court dismissed in their entirety the actions brought by Slovakia and Hungary.
The Court found that Article 78(3) enables EU institutions to adopt all the provisional measures necessary to respond effectively and swiftly to the emergency situation characterised by the sudden inflow of displaced persons. These may be non-legislative acts provided they are temporary and do not have the effect of permanently amending existing legislation – as was seen in the present case. As the decision was due to a non-legislative act, its adoption was not subject to requirements applicable to other measures such as consultation of the European Parliament, and to the public nature of the deliberations and vote in the European Council.
As to whether the relocation mechanism was effective in achieving its objective, the Court found that the legality of the decision could not be called into question on the basis of retrospective assessments of its efficacy. Such an assessment may only be challenged where it appears manifestly incorrect in light of information available at the time of the decision. This was deemed not to be the case as the Council carried out a detailed examination of statistical data available to it at the time and an objective analysis of the effects of the measure on the emergency situation. The Court opined that the low number of relocations under the scheme was in fact due to lack of cooperation on the part of certain Member States.
Finally, the Court held that the Council did not exceed its broad discretion as the objective pursued by the contested decision could not have been be achieved by less restrictive measures.
Click here for the judgment in full.