Greece Croatia and Italy Face Legal Action for Asylum Systems
The European Commission initiated legal proceedings against Greece, Croatia and Italy on Thursday for inadequately documenting refugees. It said the three countries failed to fingerprint asylum seekers and record the data within 72 hours, as mandated by the Eurodac Regulation, despite warnings in October. Hungary also faces an infringement case for its asylum legislation. Some of its latest regulations are "incompatible with E.U. law," the Commission said in a statement that listed concerns about strict appeals procedures and insufficient translation services. Europe continues to struggle under a flow of refugees and migrants arriving from war-torn and poverty-stricken regions in numbers not seen since World War II. More than 710,000 asylum seekers entered the E.U. in the first nine months of 2015, up from 282,000 in all of 2014, according to European border monitoring agency Frontex. Greece is on the front line of this mass migration. The European Commission said nearly half a million refugees arrived in Greece between July 20 and Nov. 30, of which 121,000 were fingerprinted, according to the BBC. Refugees have also traveled to Italy in staggering numbers, with 149,100 people arriving by sea this year, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. BBC