A number of countries are allegedly preparing an ultimatum for Hungary and Poland to either accept more refugees or leave the European Union.
Both countries have ignored a push from the EU to relocate 160,000 migrants proportionally across the union. The Times reported Tuesday that Germany, France and up to 21 other countries are prepared to demand Hungary and Poland accept the quotas if they want to stay in the EU.
“They will have to make a choice: are they in the European system or not?” an unnamed senior diplomatic source told The Times. “You cannot blackmail the EU, unity has a price.”
The European Court of Justice is expected to rule in favor of quotas by the end of the year. If countries still refuse to cooperate, the EU will impose financial and political sanctions.
“We are confident that the ECJ will confirm validation,” the source told The Times. “Then they must abide by the decision. If they don’t then they will face consequences, both financial and political. No more opt-outs. There is no more ‘one foot in and one foot out.’ We are going to be very tough on this.”
Hungarians almost unanimously rejected the relocation scheme in a referendum last October. The voter turnout was below 50 percent, which made the results invalid.
Zoltán Kovács, a spokesman for the Hungarian government, told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the country has every right to reject migrants as a sovereign nation.
“Just because we don’t agree on a couple of things with the lines, tracks and the decision the European Union is making, it doesn’t mean that we are anti-European,” Kovács told TheDCNF. “We would like to commit the same mistakes, we would like to retain the elements of sovereignty which are there by law and we are against a stealth way of taking away elements of your sovereignty.”
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