Case summaries
The case concerned the inadmissibility of an application for international protection considering the Dublin II criteria and the validity of a visa.
The fact that Poland agreed to take charge of the asylum procedure of a whole family is, by itself, not a proper basis for an inadmissibility decision. The hierarchy of the criteria for determining the Member State responsible for the procedure on the merits, set out in Art 5(1) Dublin II Regulation, must be respected. In this case the husband and father of the family had already been admitted to the procedure on the merits and, therefore, Art 8 was applicable prior to Art 14.
This case concerned the interpretation of Article 20(1)(d) and Article 20(2) of the Dublin Regulation and the analysis of time limits under these provisions when the Member State provides for suspensive effect of an appeal. The time limit for the period of implementation of the transfer begins to run, not as from the time of the provisional judicial decision suspending transfer but from the time of the judicial decision which rules on the merits of the procedure and which is no longer such as to prevent its implementation.
The applicant challenged his transfer to Greece from the UK under the Dublin II Regulation, on the basis that the situation for asylum seekers in Greece would lead to a violation of Article 3 ECHR. The Court declared the application manifestly ill-founded and therefore inadmissible, as it was presumed that Greece would comply with its obligations and would not refoule him to his county of origin Iraq.
The conditions for asylum seekers in Greece were at the time of the decision not of such a character that it would prevent transferring asylum seekers according to the Dublin Regulation.
If a Member Sate has issued a visa that enables an applicant to enter its territory and that visa has expired less than six months previously, that Member State is responsible for the examination of the applicant’s asylum application as long as the applicant has not left the territory of the EU Member States. In this case, the visa issued by Slovenian authorities expired only 5 days before the asylum application was made in France. Slovenia was, therefore, the responsible Member State under Art 9(4) Dublin Regulation.
The interview report established by an officer of a Prefecture is admissible evidence even if it has not been signed and was conducted without the assistance of an interpreter. When an asylum applicant denies having made statements recorded in that report, he must provide evidence. In this case, the applicant did not provide evidence that he had not crossed Italy and, in a written letter addressed to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons, he even mentioned having crossed Italy.
The presence of an adult asylum applicant’s sibling in an EU Member State entails no obligation for that State to apply Art 7 Dublin Regulation, as siblings are not included in the definition of family members in Art 2(i). This was the case even though the applicant’s brother had been granted refugee status and, subsequently, citizenship in France.
Although the applicant, an adult without children, did not fall within the definition of a family member under Art 2(i) Dublin Regulation and could therefore not rely on Art 7 and Art 8 to defeat a transfer order, his links to family members in France could justify applying Art 3(2) or Art 15. In such a case, the definition of a family member should not be interpreted in the restrictive sense of Art 2(i). In order to apply a broader definition, the applicant must provide evidence of the intensity of the links to the family. In this case, the applicant failed to provide such evidence.
In this case, the Council of State held that the separation of a family, which results from the implementation of the Dublin Regulation, is unlawful if it has not been ascertained that the family could be reunited in one of the two countries concerned under the Regulation.