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The Latest: Czechs study EU legal opinion on migrant quotas

Posted October 31, 2019 7:00 am

The Associated Press

Refugees and migrants who just arrive at the port of Elefsina, near Athens, wait to board buses, on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019. About 700 refugees and migrants arrived from Samos island to the port of Elefsina as authorities have been moving hundreds of migrants deemed to be vulnerable from the overcrowded Samos camp to camps on the mainland. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) The Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) - The Latest on immigration into Europe (all times local):

1:55 p.m.

The Czech Republic's prime minister says his government is studying a legal opinion of a top European Union legal adviser who says his country, Hungary and Poland broke EU law by refusing to comply with the bloc's migrant quota system.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis says the opinion of Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston is still new, not legally binding and the Czech Republic is analyzing it.

Although not legally binding, such recommendations are usually followed by the European Court of Justice.

Babis says "we need to wait for the court to issue a ruling, which is binding in any way." He previously called the quota system "unacceptable and divisive." In a legal opinion Thursday, Sharpston said the EU's highest court should rule that the three countries "have failed to fulfill their obligations under EU law."

The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland took in almost none over the two years the system was in operation.

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11:25 a.m.

A top European Union legal adviser says the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland have been breaking EU law by refusing to comply with the bloc's migrant quota scheme.

In a legal opinion Thursday, Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston said the EU's highest court should rule that the three countries "have failed to fulfill their obligations under EU law."

EU nations agreed in 2015 to relocate 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece as the countries buckled under the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants.

But the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland took in almost none over the two years the scheme was in operation. The EU's executive Commission sought an explanation but they gave no satisfactory answers.

Sharpston's opinion is not legally binding, but such recommendations are usually followed by the European Court of Justice.

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11: a.m.

A European top official says the situation in Greece's migrant camps is "explosive" and is urging the country's authorities to "urgently" transfer asylum-seekers from islands to the mainland as soon as possible.

Speaking at the end of a five-day visit in Greece, the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic said Thursday that "the situation of migrants, including asylum-seekers, in the Greek Aegean islands has dramatically worsened over the past 12 months."

She says there is "a desperate lack of medical care and sanitation in the vastly overcrowded camps I have visited. People queue for hours to get food and to go to bathrooms, when these are available."

Greek authorities are struggling to cope with a sharp rise in the number of arrivals over the summer months on Lesbos and other islands in the eastern Aegean Sea where European Union-funded camps are suffering severe overcrowding and outbreaks of violence.

Refugees and migrants take part in a protest outside an overcrowded refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos, on Friday, Oct. 18, 2019. Overcrowding at island camps has continued to worsen despite an effort by the Greek government to move more asylum seekers to the mainland. (AP Photo/Michael Svarnias) The Associated Press

16 year-old Montaha from Aleppo, Syria, walks with her two months daughter Batour after their arrival at the port of Elefsina, near Athens, on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019. About 700 refugees and migrants arrived from Samos island to the port of Elefsina as authorities have been moving hundreds of migrants deemed to be vulnerable from the overcrowded Samos camp to camps on the mainland. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) The Associated Press

Refugees and migrants sit inside a bus at the toll stations of Malgara, near the Greek port city of Thessaloniki, on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019. Protesting local residents in northern Greece set up roadblocks to try and prevent migrants from settling in the area. The government has promised to expand a network of refugee camps and hotel residence programs on the Greek mainland in an effort to ease severe overcrowding at facilities on islands near the Turkish coast. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos) The Associated Press

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