At the height of an influx of people seeking refuge in 2015, a majority of EU capitals agreed to a refugee relocation scheme under which asylum seekers would be moved from overburdened Greece and Italy to other member states.
Each country was allocated a set quota of asylum seekers, many of whom were fleeing the war in Syria. Budapest, Prague and Warsaw opposed the scheme from the outset.
By late 2017, Hungary and Poland had not taken any asylum seekers, while the Czechia accepted 12 relocated migrants from Greece. Under the EU scheme, the three countries were supposed to take in more than 10,000 refugees.
The EU executive, therefore, took the three countries to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), arguing that they were failing in their legal obligations. The three countries could face hefty fines.
The 2016 EU-Turkey deal helped to ease the crisis on Greek islands near Turkey, whose facilities were overwhelmed by a refugee influx in 2015. The number of refugees and migrants coming from Turkey has significantly reduced as a result. It was agreed that irregular migrants arriving on the Greek islands from Turkey who do not apply for asylum or whose application has not been accepted may be returned to Turkey. But that changed when Turkey did not receive the promised support from the EU, leading it to open its borders for refugees who want to cross to Europe last month.
With the highest number of Syrian refugees in the world, around 3.7 million, Ankara has reached its capacity and was left alone in the fight to stop the refugee flow.
