Case summaries

In this case, the Austrian Asylum Court held the decision of the Federal Asylum Office not to grant refugee status to the applicant’s child was a violation of Austrian asylum law since the child’s father had been granted refugee status. The Court also held a separation of the newborn child from its mother violates Art 8 ECHR and, therefore, the applicant’s asylum application has to be admitted to the procedure on the merits.

In appealing a decision to transfer the wife and children of an asylum applicant to Poland, the applicants relied on the humanitarian provision in Art 15 Dublin Regulation. They also noted Art 3(2) of the Dublin Regulation states separation of family members should be avoided and that such a separation would violate Art 8 ECHR. The Austrian Asylum Court allowed the appeal on the basis of Austrian asylum law, under which family members of an asylum applicant have the right to receive the same status as the applicant.

An expulsion order in relation to an elderly woman with a deteriorating medical condition gave rise to a real risk of a violation of Art 3 and Art 8 ECHR. In light of this risk, the Asylum Court held that the sovereignty clause in the Dublin Regulation should be applied in combination with Article 15 of the same Regulation, even though the latter was not directly applicable in this case.

Detaining children in a closed centre designed for adults is unlawful and ill-suited to their extreme vulnerability, even though they were accompanied by their mother.

Art 3 and Art 15 Dublin Regulation are only applicable if there exist compelling reasons to believe the receiving country is incapable of welcoming asylum applicants in appropriate conditions or if the applicants can prove that they personally risk being subjected to ill treatment or not benefitting fully from an effective right to asylum. In this case, the applicants had not demonstrated they were personally victims of ill treatment in Poland. Poland was considered to offer sufficient guarantees against deportation and for an effective and impartial asylum procedure.

After the expiry of the six months’ time limit for transfer, the responsibility for examining the applications for asylum lies with the Member State in which these applications were lodged. This Member State shall examine the applications in accordance with national asylum law.

This was an appeal against the decision by the Federal Asylum Office to transfer the first applicant to Poland and the second applicant, including their two children, to the Czech Republic. The Asylum Court allowed the appeal and found the consultations with other Member States and the decisions of the Federal Asylum Office to be arbitrary, ignoring national legislation requiring one procedure for the whole family and violating the Dublin II Regulation’s emphasis on the necessity of maintaining family unity as well as Article 8 of the ECHR.

The scope of the Reception Conditions Directive can be limited in relation to asylum applicants that do not respect their obligation to  prove their identity in order to enable the national authorities to verify whether any prior applications had been made. In this case, the Reception Conditions Directive was set aside following noncompliance with Art 18(1) EURODAC Regulation, which requires all asylum applicants above the age of 14 to agree to have their fingerprints recorded.

In this case the Council of State had to determine whether the Reception Conditions Directive continues to apply to asylum applicants that are subject to procedures under the Dublin Regulation. The Council found Member States are bound by the obligations in the Directive until the handling of the applicant’s case or the transfer to the Responsible Member State is enforced.

An intervention by the French urgent applications judge [juge des référés] on the grounds of urgency is not considered until a decision on a transfer of an asylum applicant under the Dublin Regulation has been made. In this case, the asylum applicant was not yet subject to a transfer decision and there was therefore no particular need for an urgent intervention within the 48-hour period, as provided by article L.521-2 of the French Code on Administrative Justice.