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PM Orbán: Hungary will sue Brussels if they don't drop mandatory migrant quotas

There is a stalemate on the issue right now; Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who holds the rotating EU Council presidency, is to propose a solution by the next EU summit in December

Hungary will sue the European Commission and resist mandatory migrant resettlement quotas if Brussels does not take them off the agenda, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said.

PM Orbán said his government would use a recent referendum in Hungary, in which the overwhelming majority of those who voted rejected the EU quotas, to challenge Brussels, Reuters reports today.

He said there was a stalemate on the issue right now; Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who holds the rotating EU Council presidency, is to propose a solution by the next EU summit in December.

PM Orbán told state radio that if the European Commission did not give up the idea of quotas, "then we will resist ... we will not carry out (the EU decision), we will sue the Commission".

"There will be a serious legal debate on whether a foreign population can be imposed on the people of an EU member state against its will," he added. "This will be a big battle, and for this we need the (amended) constitution."

The prime minister says deciding whether to accept migrants is a matter of national sovereignty and wants to amend Hungary's constitution next month to ban the settlement of migrants there.