Case summaries
A failure to apply the Sovereignty Clause in Article 3.2 of Regulation (EC) 343/03 is unlawful when the applicant is in a seriously compromised state of health.
Following the decision of Abdulla et al. (C-175/08) of the European Court of Justice, revocation of refugee status presupposes that a significant and non-temporary change of circumstances has taken place. This is the case if the factors which formed the basis of the recognition of refugee status, may be regarded as having been permanently eradicated. The relevant standard of probability for the determination of the likelihood of future persecution is the same both for the recognition and the revocation of refugee status, i.e. a change in circumstances has to be assessed on the basis of whether there is still a "considerable" probability of persecution (change from former case law).
Applying Art 4.4 of the Qualification Directive, the Council for Alien Law Litigation (CALL) held that the mere finding that persecution has ceased in the country of origin, without showing that there are no good reasons to consider that such persecution will not be repeated, is insufficient to reject an application for asylum.
Plea for an ab initio re-examination of an application for asylum. The Special Committee formed under Article 3(5) of Presidential Decree 61/1999 gave a positive opinion because the Applicant had been involved in political activities in his country, as a Kurd, against the ruling regime; and that activity had increased during his stay in Greece. The application for asylum was rejected by the Minister for Public Order without any specific justification for deviating from the Special Committee's clear opinion. When assessing whether there is evidence that a person seeking recognition as a refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution, the Administration may take account of information regarding the activities of the interested party's close relatives.
The exclusion ground “serious non-political crime” does not automatically apply to a supporter of the PKK. In contrast, an examination of the individual responsibility has to be carried out in each case.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that Turkey had violated Article 5 para 1 and 4 of the Convention with regards to the applicant’s unlawful detention and lack of remedy to challenge the lawfulness of his deprivation of liberty. Further, it found a violation of Article 34.
The facilitated standard of proof under Art. 4.4 of the Qualification Directive may be applied to the examination of subsidiary protection. Under German law, subsidiary protection is not excluded on the ground that the applicant is a “danger to the community”.
The right to family life can outweigh the ‘state responsibility’ criteria in the Dublin II Regulation. The Court held that the application for asylum should be processed in Sweden, in order to secure the right to family and private life (Art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights), despite the fact that another State was responsible under the Dublin II Regulation.
- An individual is not excluded from refugee status where they have been convicted and sentenced as a juvenile, this only applies in cases of convictions and sentences according to the criminal law applicable to adults.
- The applicant is not excluded from refugee status because of publicly distributing portraits of Öcalan (founder of the PKK) as a youth. This cannot be considered as an act of supporting terrorism within the meaning of the exclusion ground of Art 12.2 of the Qualification Directive.
Partial quashing of the list of safe countries of origin: Armenia, Madagascar, Turkey and Mali (women only) removed from the list