Case summaries
HIV-related marginalisation and discrimination can reach the threshold of seriousness to establish persecution but is not sufficient to be granted international protection. In order to benefit from international protection, it must be established that there are personal reasons for a well-founded fear of being persecuted due to HIV-contamination. In this context, seropositivity can be regarded as being part of a social group, which is a valid persecution ground. In the case at hand, the Court took into account aspects of vulnerability which are unrelated to HIV-status.
Except for very limited exceptions, the statutory three-year waiting period for family reunification of persons granted ‘temporary protection’ does not allow for an individualised assessment of the interest of family unity in light of the concrete situation of the persons concerned. Eventually the Court finds a violation of Article 8 of the Convention since the measure (whose goal is not otherwise challenged) had a disproportionate impact in the case at hand.
The Court decides that the maximum period of detention for the purpose of removal of a person on the grounds of public policy or public security under Belgian law, according to which Union citizens and their family members are treated in the same way as third-country nationals subject to a return procedure, exceeds the principle of proportionality and thus does not comply with EU law.
Article 40(2) of the Asylum Procedures Directive does not distinguish between initial and subsequent applications for international protection. As such, Member States should not treat the assessment of evidence submitted in subsequent applications different from evidence submitted in a first application. Any document submitted by the applicant in support of his application for international protection must be considered, and the inability to authenticate that document cannot justify the exclusion of such a document from the examination.
The assessment of the existence of indiscriminate violence under Article 15 (c) of the Qualification Directive may not be based exclusively on a quantitative assessment of casualties and population ratios. A comprehensive appraisal of all the circumstances of the individual case, and in particular those which characterise the situation of the applicant’s country of origin, is required.
The Court finds that third-country nationals without a valid residence title in a Member State are illegally present in that Member State and thus fall under the scope of the Return Directive, irrespective of the situation or the measures that led to the illegal presence of the person concerned. Against this backdrop, the Court holds that a deportation order cannot uphold an entry and residence ban without there being any return decision for the applicant which is thus incompatible with the Return Directive.
National legislation that grants the possibility of rejecting an application made by a third-country national or a stateless person for international protection, whose previous application seeking refugee status in another Member State implementing the Dublin III Regulation had been rejected, is precluded under Article 33(2)(d) of Directive 2013/32 read in conjunction with Article 2(q) thereof.
Article 27(1) of Dublin III Regulation read in the light of recital 19 thereof, and Article 47 of the Charter preclude national legislation that bars domestic courts from assessing an application for annulment of a Dublin transfer decision by considering circumstances that emerged after the transfer decision was adopted and which are decisive for the correct application of the regulation. However, such circumstances may not be considered if that legislation foresees a specific remedy with ex nunc review that can be exercised after the emergence of the new circumstances is not conditional on the person’s deprivation of liberty or on the imminent implementation of that decision.
Member States are required to take due account of the best interests of the child before adopting a return decision accompanied by an entry ban, even where the person to whom that decision is addressed is not a minor but his or her father.
The absence of food provision raised an issue of Article 3 in respect of the first applicant, given his state of total dependency on the Hungarian government during his stay at the Röszke transit zone. The physical conditions of the container in which the family stayed in, the unsuitable facilities for children, irregularities in the provision of medical services, and the prolonged stay in the area amounted to a violation of Article 3 in respect of the applicant mother and the children.
The family’s stay at the Röszke transit zone amounted to deprivation of liberty due to, inter alia, the lack of any domestic legal provisions fixing the maximum duration of the applicants’ stay, the excessive duration of the applicants’ stay and the conditions in the transit zone. Their deprivation of liberty was unlawful under Article 5 (1), as there was no strictly defined statutory basis for the applicants’ detention and no formal decision complete with reasons for detention had been issued by the Hungarian authorities.
Article 5 (4) was also violated because he applicants did not have avenue in which the lawfulness of their detention could have been decided promptly by a court.