Case summaries

This ruling concerned the scope of judicial review when reviewing compliance with the criterion of Article 10(1) for determining responsibility for examining an asylum application under Regulation 343/2003. The Court held that Art. 19(2) of the Regulation must be interpreted as meaning that, in circumstances where a Member State has agreed to take charge of an applicant for asylum on the basis of the Art. 10(1) criterion the only way in which the applicant for asylum can call into question the choice of that criterion is by pleading systemic deficiencies in the asylum procedure and in the conditions for the reception of applicants for asylum in that Member State, which provide substantial grounds for believing that the applicant for asylum would face a real risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Art. 4 of the Charter.

The Court examined the complaints of a Somali national concerning her detention conditions in Malta (Article 3), which deteriorated her mental health and resulted in inhuman and degrading treatment.  She further alleged that her detention was in breach of Article 5 § 1, 2 and 4 (Right to liberty and security).

Examining the applicant’s complaints of unlawful detention, absence of information on the specific reasons of his detention and lack of access to effective remedies, the Court found a violation of Article 5 para 1 and Article 5 para 4 of the Convention. 

The lack of close and rigorous scrutiny during the relevant period by the Czech authorities of the Applicant’s claim that expulsion would violate his rights under Article 3, including the ignoring of an important judgment blocking his extradition, constituted a violation of Article 13 in conjunction with Article 3.

The Applicant’s alleged risk of persecution due to his former employment with the Iranian Intelligence Services was found by the Court to be sufficiently credible to give rise to a violation of Article 3 if the Applicant were forcibly returned to Iran. The French authorities’ use of the priority procedure did not however violate Article 13 in the Applicant’s case.

The Asylum Court violated the right of access to the courts by rejecting an appeal in a case where an application for family reunification had been submitted at an Embassy. The asylum authorities acted arbitrarily in assuming that there was no legal entitlement to a formal notification of the decision in writing on such an application.

The ban on the introduction of new matters in appeal proceedings as stipulated in the Asylum Act does not violate the right of access to the courts contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union as it represents a proportional restriction.

In the case of a Palestinian stateless asylum-seeker from Lebanon, the Court found the objection of the OIN (that was otherwise unverified by documents and based on which the decision to reject was made) to be unfounded, and recognised the Applicant as refugee. The Court emphasized that any procedure where the contents of the objection concerning a matter of national security are not subject to review, is arbitrary and seriously contradicts the principles of the rule of law as it makes the right to an effective remedy meaningless.

This case concerns a child asylum applicant who had his appeal against refusal of asylum considered after he had turned 18, and thus had become an adult. He complained that this breached Article 39 of the Procedures Directive (effective remedy).

The case concerns a Syrian Kurd’s detention by Cypriot authorities and his intended deportation to Syria after an early morning police operation on 11 June 2010 removing him and other Kurds from Syria from an encampment outside government buildings in Nicosia in protest against the Cypriot Government’s asylum policy.

The Court found a violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights taken together with Articles 2 (right to life) and 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment) due to the lack of an effective remedy with automatic suspensive effect to challenge the applicant’s deportation; a violation of Article 5 §§ 1 and 4 (right to liberty and security) of the Convention due to the unlawfulness of the applicant’s entire period of detention with a view to his deportation without an effective remedy at his disposal to challenge the lawfulness of his detention.