Case summaries

Given the condition of Greek health care, a person with a neurological condition, who requires medical follow-up and who has a family, may rightfully invoke Article 3 ECHR to block her, and her family’s, transfer to Greece. 

In order to examine prohibitions of deportation, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has to consider the case of each family member even in cases of family associations separately whether deportation prohibitions exist. In this case, the risk assessment must be based on the assumption that a nuclear family living together in the Federal Republic of Germany will return to its country of origin as a family unit. This also applies if individual family members have already been granted a protection status or if national deportation prohibitions have been established.

The lower Court could not have carried out a more critical analysis, especially since there was no evidence, since the applicant’s entire claim was based on personal reasons.

LGBT individuals who have left Morocco can be granted refugee status as the socially and legally hostile environment towards LGBT individuals in this country can justify fear of persecution based on their membership to a particular group. A cautious assessment of the consequences of a return to the country of origin and an extensive benefit of the doubt are advised in the review of asylum applications of Moroccan nationals identifying as LGBT.

A medical examination to assess vulnerability was requested by an applicant in administrative detention. This demand was not examined by the doctor in charge in the detention facility. Therefore, the court of appeal refused an extension of the applicant’s administration detention and ordered their release. 

The Spanish authorities failed to properly consider all the relevant criteria, before initiating proceedings to expel two Moroccan nationals, who were awaiting their long-term residence permits, due to their criminal convictions. The proportionality of the measure was not adequately assessed and the applicants’ social and cultural ties with both Spain and Morocco were not taken into account.

CJEU rules on the correct processing of applications for international protection lodged separately by family members and the interrelationship between them.

The Court considered that the decision-maker should have had taken into consideration the applicant’s alleged vulnerable situation, and as a result ordered the case’s remittal to the Central Administrative Court of Lisbon so evidence could be collected on this.

In the lack of audiovisual recording of the interview, the Judge must set the appearance hearing, otherwise being the decree issued null and void for the breach of the adversarial principle.

The applicant appealed the Migration Court’s decision to dismiss his application for asylum on grounds of the availability of an internal protection alternative in the applicants home country of Afghanistan.

The Migration Court of Appeal granted the appeal as it was held that the question of internal protection can only be assessed after the court has made an individual assessment of the original grounds for protection invoked by the applicant.