Case summaries
The reception conditions for beneficiaries of international protection in Bulgaria are such that they may face severe material deprivation due to “indifference” on the part of the authorities (cfr. CJEU, Ibrahim), potentially amounting to a violation of Article 3 ECHR / Article 4 CFREU.
When the State Secretary decides that a request for international protection is not admissible, because the applicants have refugee status in Bulgaria, it is not sufficient for him to refer to the principle of mutual trust between EU Member States and to the Council of State’s jurisprudence, but he is obliged to examine the applicant’ s individual circumstances and to obtain specific information and guarantees from the Bulgarian authorities.
By not considering the argument on the applicants’ political conviction in Belgium and by avoiding answering the argument requesting a report on the Turkish authorities’ influence in Belgium, the Council for Alien Law Litigation failed to give a complete legal reasoning.
National authorities are best placed to assess the credibility of asylum claimants.
The ill-treatment of people of non-Arab ethnic origin in Sudan is not systematic. Therefore, when the personal circumstances of an applicant that may create a risk of persecution are insufficiently substantiated, the applicant’s removal to Sudan will not give rise to a violation of Article 3 of the Convention.
The fact that an asylum seeker has already been persecuted in the past or has been subject to direct threats of persecution, was considered as a well-founded argument to believe that the applicant would face the risk to be persecuted under Article 1, Section A §2 of the 1951 Refugee Convention.
When national administrations assess a request for international protection, they must take more precautions when investigating the credibility of facts from the applicant’s story in case of post-traumatic stress and female genital mutilation.
The authorities must comply with their duties to cooperate with the applicant in establishing the relevant facts of the case by being cautious and meticulous before concluding that certain contradictions and inaccuracies exist.
Well-grounded information is of central importance to any decision to exclude a person convicted for criminal matters from international protection in accordance with Article 1 F of the 1951 Refugee Convention.
The administrative detention of an Afghan national was imposed on the basis of a procedural error due to the lack of relevant documentation and unjustified information by the French authorities (Prefect and Prosecutor).
When a national authority assesses the likely persecution of an applicant for religious purposes in case of return to his/her country of origin, the national authority must evaluate, inter allia, the way the applicant will live his/her faith in his/her country of origin. The Court found that because the applicant is of Hazara ethnic origin and he converted to Christianism in Switzerland, he might face persecution in violation of art. 3 ECHR in case of return to Afghanistan. The TAF did not assess with enough seriousness the consequences of the applicant conversion ex nunc.
The applicant claims that the original Court neither made a detailed analysis of the applicant's political action – that gave rise to the persecution and, consequently, the asylum application – nor of the subsidiary protection application.
The recursive claim was declared unfounded by the Central Court, which found that there was no evidence of persecution or systematic human rights violations in the country of origin.