Hungary ready to sue EU over migrant plan

Hungary's Justice Minister announced on Tuesday that the country's parliament had cleared the way for the government to bring the European Union to court over its proposed scheme to redistribute refugees across the bloc based on a quota system. Minister Laszlo Trocsanyi said the government plans to file the suit before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg at the beginning of December.

The bill passed by the parliament accuses the EU of ignoring the right of individual national governments to "express their opinion" by trying to share 160,000 refugees across all 28 member countries based on population.

"Most of Europe's population don't agree with the quota, its social legitimacy is lacking," Trocsanyi told the press.

Orban: We decide who we want to live with

Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban, has maintained a hard line throughout the refugee crisis, and has drawn criticism for arguing that the mostly Muslim asylum seekers threatened Europe's Christian identity.

"As long as this government is breathing, there won't be any quota, or any (rejected asylum applicants) taken back," Orban said to lawmakers on Monday.

"We will decide who we want to let in who we want to live with."

Slovakia also said it will mount a legal challenge to the redistribution plan, and Poland's incoming European Affairs minister, Konrad Szymanski, said over the weekend that his government could no longer entertain the "political possibility" of the plan after the terrorist attacks in Paris.

As the refugee crisis began to reach a fever pitch at the end of the summer, Hungary moved forward with plans to build a razor-wire barrier along its border with Serbia and Croatia so that the hundreds of thousands of migrants coming through its borders would be funneled only through specific checkpoints. This has diverted the flow of refugees seeking a better life in Western Europe through Slovenia into Austria.

es/kms (AFP, Reuters)