Off the wire
• Feature: Massive protests against Abe mark Japan's Constitution Memorial Day  • France's "Up All Night" protesters rally as parliament opens debate on labor reform  • Chinese president appoints new ambassadors  • 1st LD Writethru: ASEAN, partner countries officially launch joint maritime exercise in Brunei  • Israel foils attempt to smuggle fertilizer for rocket manufacturing to Gaza  • Turkish war jets kill 18 PKK militants in northern Iraq  • Solar Impulse 2 lands in Phoenix after flight from Silicon Valley  • China denies legitimacy of "election" by so-called Tibetan "government-in-exile"  • UAE's Emirates Airline debuts flights to China's Yinchuan, Zhengzhou  • Interview: China "deserves big credit" for efforts to tackle climate change: Britain's ex-Labour leader  
You are here: 　 Home

Hungary's Supreme Court allows referendum on EU migrant quotas

Xinhua, May 3, 2016 Adjust font size:

Hungary's Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing a government referendum initiative opposing a European Union quota on refugee admissions on Tuesday.

Parliament must now win a simple majority vote on whether to order the referendum called for by the cabinet.

The referendum question that looks to be put before voters asks whether they choose to allow the EU to order the mandatory re-settlement in Hungary of non-Hungarians without parliamentary approval.

Antal Rogan, who heads the Prime Minister's Cabinet Office, said he envisaged holding the referendum in September or early October.

In principle, the Constitutional Court may review the parliamentary decision on very narrow technical grounds should parliament make any substantive changes in the question or other circumstances. The Liberal Party has appealed the decision to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that the EU has not introduced any concept of mandatory re-settlement.

Last year, the European Parliament voted for a quota system to relocate and resettle asylum seekers among EU states, and in September EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker proposed that 160,000 asylum seekers be distributed among EU states under a new migrant quota system not yet established.

The EU interior ministers approved this idea over the objections of Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Enditem