2017, 21,703 asylum-seekers out of 66,400 had been relocated from Greece, and 11,464 out of around 35,000 from Italy. Among the worst offenders were Poland and Hungary, both having refused to accept a single asylum-seeker from Italy and Greece by the year’s end. The European Court of Justice rejected Slovakia’s and Hungary’s complaint against the mandatory refugee relocation scheme. The European Commission also opened infringement proceedings against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for failing to comply with their relocation obligations. CURTAILING ACCESS TO ASYLUM AND PUSHBACKS Hungary reached a new low by passing legislation allowing pushbacks of all people found in an irregular situation in the country and by introducing the automatic detention of asylumseekers, in blatant breach of EU law. The authorities locked up in containers asylum-seekers arriving at its borders. Hungary’s systematic flouting of the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants also included severely restricting access by limiting admission to two operational border “transit zones” in which only 10 new asylum applications could be submitted each working day. This left thousands of people in substandard camps in Serbia, at risk of homelessness and forcible return further south to Macedonia and Bulgaria. Abuses and pushbacks continued at the EU external borders, from Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, and Poland. Poland’s government proposed legislation to legalize pushbacks, a regular practice at a crossing between Poland and Belarus. In a landmark ruling, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Spain for breaching the prohibition of collective expulsions and for violating the right to an effective remedy in the case of two migrants who were summarily returned from the Spanish enclave of Melilla to Morocco. Slovenia adopted legislative amendments under which it could deny entry to people arriving at its borders and automatically expel migrants and refugees who entered irregularly, without assessing their asylum claims. FORCED RETURNS EU member states also continued to put pressure on other governments to accept readmissions – in some cases without including adequate guarantees against refoulement. At a time when civilian casualties in Afghanistan were at some of their highest levels on record, European governments forced increasing numbers of Afghan asylum-seekers back to the dangers from which they fled in Afghanistan. Forced returns to Afghanistan were made from countries including Austria, the Netherlands and Norway. IMPUNITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia delivered its final judgment on 29 November 2017, bringing to a close its largely successful 23-year effort to hold perpetrators of war crimes to account. Also in November, it sentenced Bosnian Serb war leader Ratko Mladić to life imprisonment for crimes under international law, including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. At the national level, with the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which some modest progress was made, impunity remained the norm, with courts continuing to have limited capacity and resources, and facing undue political pressure. Prosecutors across the region lacked the support of the executive and their work was compromised by a climate of nationalist rhetoric and lack of political commitment to sustained regional co-operation. Amnesty International Report 2017/18 51