Case summaries

The Council of State grants the appeal lodged by the Minister of the Interior, who asked for the annulment of the order issued by the administrative tribunal’s relief judge. The latter had suspended not only the execution of the decision refusing to register M. A…’s asylum application, but also the execution regarding his transfer, by ruling ultra petita. After qualifying M. A…’s non-attendance to the repeated notifications sent for the purpose of his transfer as being intentional and systematic, the Council of State concludes in this case that no violation was found against M. A…’s fundamental liberty of the right to asylum. 

An internal armed conflict, characterised by armed clashes, prevails throughout the whole territory of Afghanistan. The situation in the Kabul region and the city itself constitutes indiscriminate violence resulting from this internal armed conflict.

Transferring a family to Finland under the Dublin Regulation where their asylum application and subsequent appeals have been rejected is unlawful on account of the humanitarian and security situation in Afghanistan. 

The authorities followed an incorrect interpretation of the Dublin Regulation 604/2013 failing to take into account that the older applicant is the brother of the minor and should remain in Hungary under Article 10 of the Regulation, despite having lodged an application in Bulgaria.

The carrying out of a transfer does not, in itself, definitively establish the responsibility of the Member State to which the person concerned has been transferred.

A Member State, to which an applicant has returned after being transferred, is not allowed to transfer that person anew to the requested Member State without respecting a take back procedure. In those circumstances, a take back request must be submitted within the periods prescribed in Article 24(2) of the Dublin III Regulation, which begins to run from the time the requesting Member State becomes aware of the presence of the person concerned on its territory.

The three-month time limit for take back requests, as prescribed by Article 21(1) of the Dublin III Regulation, will apply as soon as the competent authorities of the relevant Member State have been informed, with certainty, of the fact that international protection has been requested. Where certain responsibilities for the registration of applications have been delegated to a competent legal entity, the authorities will be deemed to have been so informed once the legal entity in question has made a written record of the applicant’s intention to claim asylum. 

The Federal Administrative Court changed its jurisprudence concerning those competence provisions of the Dublin-III-Regulation that can be challenged with a complaint against a decision not to take charge. The Court follows the approach taken by the CJEU in Ghezelbash (C-63/15) and Mengesteab (C-670/16) and allows complaints based on missing the term to request another Member State to take charge (Article 21(1) Dublin-III-Regulation). If successful, the Member State responsible for requesting to take charge will, itself, be in charge to deal with the asylum application.

The Court also held that notifications by the Swiss Ministry for Migration (SEM) stating that the Dublin-procedure has been terminated are considered to be interim acts that can be reviewed until the closing of the complete procedure, if the acting authority provides objective grounds and acts in respect of the principle of good faith.

The applicant had fled from Russia and sought international protection from Portuguese authorities.

The request was later denied by the Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service, after issuing a take charge request directed to Finland, the responsible State for the assessment of the applicant’s request according to the DRIII, based on her possession of a short stay visa in Finland.

The Refugee Appeals Board reversed the Danish Immigration Service decision to Dublin Transfer a female asylum seeker and her two minor children to Italy. The Board found that a transfer to Italy could amount to a breach of Article 4 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as reception conditions in Italy are subject to certain shortcomings and the asylum seeker and her two minor children were considered to be extremely vulnerable. 

The following questions are referred to the Court of Justice of the EU for a preliminary ruling:

(i) when dealing with transfer of a protection applicant under regulation 604/2013 to the UK, is a national decision-maker, in considering any issues arising in relation to the discretion under art. 17 and/or any issues of protection of fundamental rights in the UK, required to disregard circumstances as they stand at the time of such consideration in relation to the proposed withdrawal of the UK from the EU;

(ii) does the concept of the “determining member state” in regulation 614/2013 include the role of the member state in exercising the power recognised or conferred by art. 17 of the regulation;

(iii) do the functions of a member state under art. 6 of regulation 604/2013 include the power recognised or conferred by art. 17 of the regulation;

(iv) does the concept of an effective remedy apply to a first instance decision under art. 17 of regulation 604/2013 such that an appeal or equivalent remedy must be made available against such a decision and/or such that national legislation providing for an appellate procedure against a first instance decision under the regulation should be construed as encompassing an appeal from a decision under art. 17;

(v) does art. 20(3) of regulation 604/2013 have the effect that in the absence of any evidence to displace a presumption that it is in the best interests of a child to treat his or her situation as indissociable from that of the parents, the national decision maker is not required to consider such best interests separately from the parents as a discrete issue or as a starting point for consideration of whether the transfer should be take place.

The decision of the Administrative Court of Düsseldorf prohibits a Dublin transfer of an asylum seeker from Germany to Greece stating that there are substantial grounds for believing that systemic flaws in the asylum procedure and reception conditions in Greece could put the applicant at risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment, in violation of Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.