Slovakia said Wednesday it had mounted a legal challenge to the EU’s plan to distribute 160,000 asylum-seekers among member-states under a quota system.

Slovakia said Wednesday it had mounted a legal challenge to the EU's plan to distribute 160,000 asylum-seekers among member-states under a quota system.

"The Slovak republic has officially filed a lawsuit against the Council of the European Union, to the highest court ... in Luxembourg," leftist Prime Minister Robert Fico said.

The suit challenges "so-called mandatory quotas" on refugee re-location adopted by the EU in September, he said.

The European Court of Justice adjudicates in disputes over how EU law is interpreted and applied.

"We demand that the court annul this decision, pronounce it invalid and require the Council to pay the costs of legal proceedings," Fico said Wednesday.

Under the EU's quota system, Bratislava is expected to take in just under 2,300 refugees.

Fico slammed the quota program as a "total fiasco" and said "we have to find another way" of dealing with the EU's refugee inflow.

A nation of 5.4 million people, Slovakia is among several eastern European countries that are staunchly against a system of refugee quotas designed to ease the burden on countries like Greece, Italy and Germany that have received the lion's share of arrivals.

Few refugees have entered Slovakia on their voyage to western Europe, and even fewer asylum-seekers have chosen to stay.

EU neighbor Hungary has also said it will challenge the contentious quota scheme.

Seeking re-election in March, the popular Fico has previously said he would rather risk infringing EU rules than implement what he described as the EU's "diktat" refugee quotas.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated in late November that nearly 860,000 refugees had landed in Europe so far this year, with over 3,500 dying while crossing the Mediterranean in search of safety.