Some 106 million people in 11 Central European countries reject the European Union's migration quota, the Budapest-based Nezopont Intezet (Standpoint Institute) announced on Friday.
A recent poll on "Do you consider it acceptable for the European Union (EU) to impose immigration quotas in the countries without the consent of the Member States?" found that 106 million out of 157 million elector citizens in the Central European countries are opposed to the migration quota.
The poll showed that 94 percent of the electorate in Slovaks, 93 percent of the Czechs, 89 percent of the Bulgarians, 87 percent of the Hungarians, 83 percent of the Slovenes, 82 percent of the Romanians, 74 percent of the Poles, 71 percent of the Croats and 70 percent of the Serbs rejected the migration quota.
The question has divided Germans and Austrians, as half of the respondents in these two countries (50 percent in Germany and 46 percent in Austria) opposed the idea.
The public opinion poll was conducted between June 6 and July 6, 2017, asking 1,000 people in each country. The sample was representative for the population over the age of 18 according to age, region, type of settlement and school qualification.
On Wednesday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled against Hungary on the relocation of migrants.
The ECJ dismissed the legal action launched in 2015 by Slovakia and Hungary against a compulsory relocation scheme of migrants, in order to lift some of the burden from fellow EU Member States Italy and Greece, who were hit the strongest by the influx of migrants.
Hungary should have adopted 1,294 migrants in the framework of the arrangement, but has accepted none so far before the deadline of Sept. 26.
The Hungarian government harshly criticized the ruling of the ECJ, calling it "irresponsible" and "outrageous", according to Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto.
However, even if reluctantly, Hungary is going to abide by the rule of law. "We must recognize the sentence, we must live with it", Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday in the public radio MR1. He added that this was no reason for Hungary to change its policy on migrants.
"We are the ones who decide with whom we want to live together," he underlined.
As of July 24, 2017, the EU's total number of relocations stands at 24,676, of which 16,803 are from Greece and 7,873 from Italy.
As for resettlement, 17,179 persons have been resettled since July 2015, when member states agreed to resettle a total of 22,504 asylum seekers.
A tide of refugees fleeing war in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and poverty in other Middle Eastern and African countries in 2015 led to Europe's biggest migration crisis since World War II.
SOURCE: Xinhua
