Case summaries

The decision of the Administrative Court of Düsseldorf prohibits a Dublin transfer of an asylum seeker from Germany to Greece stating that there are substantial grounds for believing that systemic flaws in the asylum procedure and reception conditions in Greece could put the applicant at risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment, in violation of Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The right to be heard entails the obligation of the court to take note of the arguments put forward by the parties and to take these arguments into consideration when taking its decision. While this does not require the court to explicitly address every single fact put forward by the parties, the grounds of the decision have to refer to the essential issues raised by such facts.

In case of a single mother and her four minor children facing deportation to a country where beneficiaries of international protection had to live under difficult conditions, these personal circumstances of the applicants are of key importance to the legal evaluation. Independently of the question, whether deportations to Bulgaria were, in light of the current conditions, generally permissible, the provisions of Art. 21 et seqq. of the Reception Conditions Directive clearly stipulated that the concerns of families with children had to be given particular consideration.

Consequently, under such circumstances a court was required to specifically set out why it assumed that the family would be guaranteed suitable accommodation that excluded the possibility of health risks and met the needs of a family with children. Otherwise, the decision amounts to an infringement of the applicant’s right to be heard under Art. 103 (1) of the Basic Law.

The reduction in the financial allowance available to child dependants of asylum seekers was not contrary to the requirement that the best interests of the child be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children.

The right to have recourse to the courts as enshrined in the German constitution (Art. 19 ss. 4 GG) is to be assessed in a thorough and reliable manner if the right to physical integrity (Art. 2 ss. 2 GG and Art. 3 of the ECHR) is at stake. The courts only adhere to this obligation if they carefully assess the evidence brought to them by the applicant considering the specific context of a person who has been granted international protection in a third country. 

Both applicants seek legal assistance and to register their application for asylum, which was previously refused by the Alpes Maritimes Prefect. The interim relief judge decided that the Prefect’s refusal to provide the individuals with an application form to register their application for asylum, notwithstanding their presence within the territory and contact with the police, amounted to a serious breach of the right to asylum.  

The application of S.C. and her minor children Z.C. and F.C. related to the cassation of an Appeal Court judgement regarding compensation for the harm they suffered as a result of an indisputably unjust decision to place the Applicants in a Guarded Detention Centre for Foreigners. The Supreme Court reversed the challenged judgement and passed the case to the Appeal Court for re-consideration. 

In this application, the associations ask the Council of State to annul, for abuse of power, the decree n°2015-1329 of 21 October 2015 on the allowance granted to asylum seekers.

This decree is here annulled by the Council of State because its article 2 doesn’t provide for a sufficient additional amount for adult asylum seekers to allow them to seek private housing when they weren’t provided with an accommodation but had accepted material reception conditions. 

D.T., who possesses a leave to remain in Poland due to humanitarian considerations, appealed the Municipal Appeal Board’s decision to uphold the decision refusing to award her child benefits. Relying on a purposive interpretation of the applicable regulations regarding social welfare and the access of foreigners to the labour market, the Court decided to set aside both decisions, while stressing that the deciding body shall be bound by the legal analysis contained in the Court order. 

A Judge when hearing applications for interim measures may issue an injunction against the administration on the basis of Article L. 521 of the Code of Administrative Justice when the administration’s behaviour reveals a manifest disregard of any of the requirements within the right of asylum and such an action results in serious consequences for the asylum applicant, considering in particular his age, health status and family situation.

There had been a gap of more than one month between the twenty-four hour reconsideration order made by the Judge hearing applications for interim measures, and the offer of material reception conditions made by the French Office for Immigration and Integration. This was notwithstanding the fact that at the time of the injunction, the applicant was already in a situation of extreme vulnerability (with no financial resources and five dependent children). This therefore constituted a violation of the requirements within the right of asylum which was likely to have serious consequences for the asylum applicant.

A Dublin Transfer to Italy should be prevented when the person concerned is a vulnerable person as per in Article 3 (2) Dublin III Regulation.