Case summaries

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. 

The proposed transfer of the Sudanese asylum seeker from Austria to Hungary would not constitute a violation of Article 3 of the ECHR.

This case concerned an application for a licence for a civil marriage with a Greek citizen where there was an inability to provide a certificate of being unmarried or a birth certificate because of disrupted relationship with homeland and in the context of the submission of a sworn statement regarding the absence of any impediment to marriage. The case considered the balance between the safeguards of family law and a State's obligation to protect the fundamental rights of refugees. Under the principle of proportionality, the private and family life of the individual is inviolable, bearing in mind that the lack of evidence of being unmarried should not prevent the him from being granted a licence to enter into a civil marriage with his partner, the mother of their two minor children which he has already voluntarily recognised. It is possible to substitute in concreto the said evidence with a simple sworn statement and, therefore, the Applicant does satisfy the legal requirements for the granting of a marriage licence.

This was a decision to suspend execution of the appealed decision of the Polish Refugee Board on refusal to accord refugee status, provide subsidiary protection or grant a permit for tolerated stay, and on deportation from the Republic of Poland.

If the Applicant is forced to leave Poland prior to the conclusion of administrative proceedings, he will not be able to exercise his right to an effective remedy in full, and if the appeal is dismissed, international protection within the meaning of the Geneva Convention will not be provided. 

While an appeal against a refusal to grant international protection is pending, it is unlawful to expel an applicant before the decision on the case has been issued. The foreign national who has been expelled is entitled to a document that will allow his re-entry into Italy.

An asylum application within the meaning of the Asylum Procedures Directive, Article 2, introductory paragraph and Article 2(b), has been made if a foreigner notifies the authorities that he would like to apply for asylum. The provision of the Foreigners Act under which a foreigner who has been declared undesirable has no right to remain is in breach of Article 7 of the Asylum Procedures Directive.

The detention of asylum applicants may undermine their ability to claim asylum and that an ‘effective remedy’ requires an appeal with suspensive effect against refoulement in order to prevent irreparable harm, sufficient time to prepare the appeal and effective legal assistance and interpretation.

This was an application for an interim injunction preventing the removal of the applicants pending the outcome of their application for leave to apply for judicial review.  The underlying leave application raised several different points, of these, one was deemed arguable: that Ireland’s deportation regime involving a lifetime ban on re-entry is contrary to the ECHR and Irish Constitution.

M’s detention pending deportation, for over 2 years and 8 months, was processed without sufficient safeguards against arbitrariness and delay, resulting in four separate violations of the Convention.

The involuntary return of an applicant, who did not intend to abandon his/her asylum application, to his/her country of origin results in the temporary interruption of the assessment of his/her case by the Court as the remedy does not temporarily have any ground.