Case summaries
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.
When acting against expulsion on the basis of the ban on expulsion contained in Article 19(1) of Legislative Decree No 286 of 1998, a Justice of the Peace is obliged to establish, under the duty of investigation to which he is subject and which is equivalent to a judge in international protection matters, any circumstances that were not made available to the Territorial Commission because the Applicant was unable to present or disclose them and the Commission was unable to establish them.
The Constitutional Court revoked the decision by the Asylum Court, as it violated the right of the Applicant to respect for his family life in accordance with Art 8 of the ECHR. In particular, the reference by the Asylum Court to the possibility of maintaining the relationship with his one-year old child (with asylum status in Austria) by means of modern media (Internet, Skype, telephone,…) was incomprehensible.
The concept of a serious violation of religious freedom according to Article 9(1)(a) of the Qualification Directive (2004/83/EC) does not simply refer to a serious encroachment on the freedom to practice one’s faith in private but also the freedom to practice religion in a public context.
The enforced renunciation of religious activities can constitute persecution. Since persecution may lie in the prohibition itself, the actual future behaviour of the asylum-seeker and associated involvement in the other legal interests of the party concerned (e.g. life and freedom) are not relevant.
When rejecting an application for international protection under the safe third country concept, Article 27 (2) (a) of the Procedures Directive needs to be taken into account. According to this article, the "connection" between the Applicant and the safe third country needs to be ascertained during the process.
The Council of State applied the reasoning employed by the CJEU in its ruling C-179-11 of 27 September 2012 and considered that temporary waiting allowance must be paid to asylum applicants subject to the Dublin II Regulation until they have actually been transferred to the Member State responsible for their asylum application.
The CALL required specific facts to be attributable to the Applicant and the existence of a high threshold of seriousness in order to make a finding of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. In this case the CALL refused to exclude the refugee status of an Applicant who had a criminal conviction for participating in the activities of a terrorist group.
In family reunification cases it is only possible to use DNA testing to verify family ties in situations where serious doubts persist concerning kinship after other forms of evidence have been presented.
The case concerns the unlawfulness of the detention pending expulsion for a total period of more than one year and eight months without effective judicial review of one of the applicants, Mr. Abas Amie (Articles 5 § 1, 5 § 4 of the ECHR); and an unlawful interference with the right to respect for family life, in breach of Article 8 of the ECHR, with respect to the other applicants, his family members.