Case summaries

Due to the COVID-19 health crisis, and especially the cancellation of flights to the applicant’s country of origin, the continuation of immigration detention is no longer required because an effective return cannot be considered anymore as a reasonable perspective.  

In the midst of the health crisis, the judge of liberty and detention of the Lille Judicial Tribunal considered that the health risk for the Applicant as well as for a third party, generated by the extension of the administrative detention was disproportionate to the perspectives of return. Especially since most countries had closed their borders.

As a result, the judge held that there was no reason to extend the duration of the Applicant’s detention.

The parents and minor siblings of a Syrian national, who was recognised as a refugee, cannot claim refugee status in terms of international protection for family members, if the beneficiary, although a minor when he was registered as an asylum applicant, was no longer a minor at the time of the court hearing.

A Union citizen’s lack of sufficient resources for their family member, who is a third-country national, not to become a burden on the national social system, cannot sufficiently establish a reason to refuse a derived right of residence on the basis of article 20 TFEU, if that refusal would result in the national having to leave the territory of the EU.

Secondly, a relationship of dependency does not exist solely because the national law requires spouses to live together.

In a case of an asylum application on the grounds of gender based persecution, supported by medical reports, the Belgian Council of State held that it belongs to the asylum authorities to investigate the origin of injuries, whose nature and seriousness imply a presumption of treatment contrary to article 3 ECHR and to assess the risks they reveal.

Without this assessment, the judge cannot legally conclude that the Applicant does not establish that he has been persecuted or has suffered serious harm or been subjected to direct threats of such persecution or harm.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the removal of families belonging to the Sikh religious minority to Afghanistan would not constitute a violation of Article 3 ECHR, as the applicants’ situation failed to reach the severity threshold required by this Article. Despite the fact that the Sikh community suffers from intimidation and intolerance within the Afghan society, the Court did not find that this group is the target of a practice of a systematic practice of ill-treatment, despite any difficulties they may be facing in the country.

The fact that many Uighurs who have returned to China have been detained in “re-education camps”, or have otherwise faced the risk of imprisonment and ill-treatment, combined with the applicants’ individual circumstances, establishes substantial grounds to believe that the applicants would be at real risk of arbitrary detention, and inhuman treatment, or even death, if they were removed to their country of origin.

If implemented, the applicants’ removal to China would be in breach of Articles 2 and 3 of the ECHR.

The Court found no violation of the Convention given that the applicants would have had access to a genuine and effective possibility of submitting arguments against their expulsion had  they entered lawfully into Spain – they did not have any “cogent reasons” for not using the border procedures available at designated entry points. As such, the lack of an individualised procedure for their removal was the consequence of their own conduct.

A Dublin transfer to Bulgaria is annulled due to the vulnerability of the applicant combined with the risk of inadequate psychological treatment in Bulgaria, the applicant’s first country of asylum, and the lack sufficient individual guarantees in case of Dublin transfer.

The Judge of the liberty and detention of the Nice Judicial Tribunal declared irregular the procedure during which the applicant was notified of his administrative detention more than an hour after the end of his police interrogation.

The Judge considered that the deprivation of liberty during that time had no legal foundation.