Case summaries

The administrative authorities ensured an adequate standard of proceedings and had correctly established the facts in a case of an applicant who had only brought up the argument that she was a victim of domestic violence at the court stage.

The Court does not accept the allegations that the applicant was deprived of her right to court because she and her children were deported before the deadline for the complaint to the court. The complaint was eventually lodged within the deadline which means she could benefit from the real possibility of applying this measure so her right to court was not infringed. Therefore the Court sees no need to request the Constitutional Tribunal to take a stand on this issue.

The Applicant appealed a decision ordering his transfer to another Member State responsible for examining his application for international protection because the six-month period during which his transfer had to be carried out in accordance with Regulation (EU) no. 604/2013 known as “Dublin III” (the “Dublin III Regulation”) had expired. 

The Council of State denied the appeal holding that the six-month period was interrupted by the legal action against the transfer measure but had not restarted because the appeal was still pending when the Préfet issued the Dublin III summons to the Applicant.

Issuing a negative decision in asylum proceedings by the Polish Refugee Board results in an obligation to leave the territory of Poland within 30 days. If this obligation is not fulfilled, it constitutes a basis for the Border Guard to launch return proceedings. Only the return decision can be forcibly executed.  Therefore, the present decision does not pose a direct threat of irreparable consequences for the applicant.

Taking into account the character of the procedure before an administrative court - within which facts of the case are not being established, but only points of law can be litigated and the applicant is represented by a professional legal representative – it cannot be stated that the absence of the applicant would limit his right to court.

An applicant’s interest in remaining in a Member State pending a decision on their right to remain will prevail if, due to a lack of knowledge about the actual living situation of refugees in the third country and negative public reports regarding such situations, there can be no assurance that the applicant will be safe in said third country.

The Respondent erred in detaining the Applicant under § 88a (1)(a) point 1 of Act No 404/2011 Coll. on the residence of aliens and amending certain other Acts in proceedings relating to administrative expulsion to the Ukraine, despite being aware of the Applicant’s intention to apply for asylum. The Respondent also incorrectly assessed whether Ukraine is a safe third country as he failed to take into account recent information on the current situation in Ukraine. Moreover, in assessing the risk of absconding, the Respondent asked improper questions. As such the Respondent's conduct violates principles of good governance.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that Spain violated the right to an effective remedy of 30 asylum seekers of Sahrawi origin who faced removal to Morocco before a thorough examination of their asylum application. It was only the ECtHR’s intervention that halted their deportation.

The contested judgment is unconstitutional as it does not provide a clear way of assessing the jurisdiction of the third country when dealing with the application. It also reveals that the situation of the Applicant for international protection is unclear in the event that the application is rejected by the third country and the Applicant is not allowed to enter its territory, and shows that it is unclear as to what the Applicant can contest in this procedure.

An efficient legal system that would stop the extradition to a country in which the Applicant could be exposed to inhuman treatment has to have suspensive effect.

The interest of an applicant to obtain a temporary stay from deportation to Italy for the time being predominates, if the applicant, in case of his return back to Italy, would be threatened with serious damage to his health due to inadequate accommodation opportunities there and because medical care would not be guaranteed due to a permanent overstretch of resources.

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 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.