Case summaries
Account must be taken of the evolution of the circumstances in the country of origin, from the moment of the application for international protection, until the moment when the Court has to take a decision.
In this instance, relying on the change of circumstances that has taken place in Ukraine since the Applicants introduced the demand, the Court grants subsidiary protection status to a Ukrainian family. The current international conflict taking place in Ukraine exposes them to a risk of serious harm.
A court may dismiss the appeal without further proceedings in a non-public session, if the appeal does not depend on the solution of a legal question that is of fundamental significance.
In the case of an Afghan, the appeal does not depend on the solution of a fundamental question, if the lower instance has sufficiently examined the situation in the appellant’s country of origin. This is the case, if the court sufficiently considered possible internal flight alternatives by air.
The ECJ has to decide on the assessment of the existence of a serious individual threat by reason of mere presence in a certain area. It has to decide whether there is a minimal threshold of civilian fatalities that excludes such risk or if a holistic approach taking into account all circumstances special to the case has to be followed to assess the existence of such threat.
Given the condition of Greek health care, a person with a neurological condition, who requires medical follow-up and who has a family, may rightfully invoke Article 3 ECHR to block her, and her family’s, transfer to Greece.
The Court of Appeal set aside the Upper Tribunal’s Country Guidance on internal relocation to Kabul, on the basis that it had made a factual error, wrongly stating that civilian causalities amounted to less than 0.001 per cent, rather than less than 0.1 per cent, of the population of Kabul. However, it did dismiss AS’s ground of appeal, which concerned whether internal relocation would be unreasonable.
The applicants’ personal circumstances and the general conditions in the country of origin have to be taken into account, when assessing whether an internal flight alternative exists. Relevant sources like the UNHCR guidelines have to be used. Otherwise this constitutes a significant procedural error.
The applicant appealed the Migration Court’s decision to dismiss his application for asylum on grounds of the availability of an internal protection alternative in the applicants home country of Afghanistan.
The Migration Court of Appeal granted the appeal as it was held that the question of internal protection can only be assessed after the court has made an individual assessment of the original grounds for protection invoked by the applicant.
The judicial examination of whether subsidiary protection shall be approved requires a thorough assessment of the individual case. This applies in particular for especially vulnerable persons.
For the assumption of reasonable internal flight alternatives, a case-by-case assessment must be made on the basis of sufficient findings about the expected situation of the asylum applicant in the country of origin. On the basis of general information on the situation in the country of origin, a young, healthy man with school education and professional experience and who is familiar with the local conditions, can in principle be expected to resettle in Kabul.
Kabul cannot be considered as a reasonable internal flight alternative for the complainant due to the lack of a sustainable social network for him there and no other particular factors which would enable the applicant's removal . Therefore the complainant does not meet the requirements for a removal to Afghanistan.