Case summaries

Not all cases with an international element can establish jurisdiction under the Convention; an assessment of exceptional circumstances on the basis of the specific facts of each case is required.

The applicants do not have any connecting links with Belgium and their sole presence in the premises of the Belgian Embassy in Lebanon cannot establish jurisdiction, as they were never under the de facto control of Belgian diplomatic or consular agents. Jurisdiction under Article 1 ECHR cannot be established solely on the basis of an administrative procedure initiated by private individuals outside the territory of the chosen state, without them having any connection with that State, nor any treaty obligation compelling them to choose that state.

In the case of an Afghan Shia Hazara applicant, the Belgian Council for Alien Litigation considered that the request for international protection was based on several sources of fear, which must be analysed in combination with each other, forming a cluster of concordant evidence.

The Council granted the applicant refugee status. 

The application of provisions on preclusion must always be decided without discretionary error. If the lower court does not make any discretionary considerations at all for its decision to apply a provision on preclusion when rejecting evidence due to a missed time-limit, it infringes the petitioner’s right to be heard under Article 78(2) of the Saxon Constitution (SächsVerf).

The Council of State applies the reasoning of ECtHR and CJEU jurisprudence to the reception conditions in Hungary to conclude that there may be a risk of ill-treatment upon return (Article 3 ECHR / Article 4 CFREU infringement) when a particularly vulnerable person who is fully dependent on state support will be confronted with "official indifference in a situation of serious deprivation or want incompatible with human dignity” upon return to Hungary.

An asylum seeker is entitled to request the temporary termination of his or her stay in an accommodation centre and to seek alternative accommodation if compliance with the distancing rules of the Saxon Corona Protection Ordinance is not possible in the centre.

The fact that an asylum seeker has already been persecuted in the past or has been subject to direct threats of persecution, was considered as a well-founded argument to believe that the applicant would face the risk to be persecuted under Article 1, Section A §2 of the 1951 Refugee Convention.  

The High Court has issued a judgment following an application for an interim order. The matter concerns the accommodation of asylum-seekers who display Covid-19 symptoms, who bears the responsibility for accommodating asylum-seekers who are symptomatic, and the communication of policy and practice in this area.

Member States cannot merely refer to the existence of public order and security concerns under Article 72 TFEU, in order to derogate from their obligations under Title V without proving that it was necessary to do so. Such a derogation cannot be made unilaterally without any control by the European institutions. As the assessment of whether an applicant constitutes a danger to national security or public order should be thorough and individualised, in accordance with previous findings in C‑369/17 (Ahmed), Member States cannot invoke this provision in the context of general prevention but have to directly link it with a specific case.

Lastly, the spirit of solidarity and the binding nature of the Relocation Decisions do not allow Member States to derogate on the basis of a Member State’s own assessment of the effectiveness of the mechanism without suggesting a sound legal basis

Well-grounded information is of central importance to any decision to exclude a person convicted for criminal matters from international protection in accordance with Article 1 F of the 1951 Refugee Convention.