Case summaries

It is the duty of the administrative authority to establish all of the facts that are important in a procedure, and thus to complete the background information for a decision to the extent that it forms a reliable basis for the decision-making itself.

The administrative authority is not relieved of this duty even with regard to the provisions of Section 34(3) of Act No 71/1967 Coll. on administrative procedure (hereinafter the “Administrative Procedure Code“), according to which the participants in a procedure must put forward the evidence that is known to them in support of their claims. 

The Migration Office of the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic may not revoke subsidiary protection in a procedure on extension of subsidiary protection initiated under Section 20(3) of the Asylum Act on the basis of an application to extend protection.

Under Section 20(3) of the Asylum Act, the procedure may result only in a decision to extend or not to extend protection.

This case concerns the State’s obligation to attempt to trace the family members of unaccompanied minor asylum seekers.

The Constitutional Court presents its opinion on the nature of the rights and principles contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union(CFRU) and on jurisdiction for the decision on questions of interpretation in connection with the CFRU. It gave an answer in the affirmative to the question of whether the CFRU, in particular Article 47 CFRU, is applicable in asylum proceedings if no such violation was found in the actual case at hand.

The authorities of first and second instance—the Head of the Office for Foreigners and the Polish Council for Refugees—refused to grant refugee status or other forms of protection to an applicant from Uganda who had applied for refugee status because of his sexual orientation. They made the same decisions but on fundamentally different grounds and factual findings. The  first instance authority found that the applicant was homosexual but that the information about the country of origin indicated that his fear was not well-founded. The  second instance authority found that homosexuals are at risk of persecution in Uganda but that the applicant was not homosexual, and the opinion of a doctor who is a sexologist did not prove sexual orientation. Instead, this needed to be proved based on the testimony of the applicant, which is then verified in the context of his general credibility during the proceedings.

The case concerns the unlawfulness of detention in Hungary of two Ivorian nationals pending the asylum proceedings.

A Russian Federation citizen arrived in Finland from another EU country (Lithuania) where he/she alleged that he/she had been persecuted and claimed international protection on this basis. The Immigration Service denied the Applicant a residence permit, failed to examine the application for international protection and decided to deport him/her to Lithuania. The Immigration Service considered Lithuania to be a safe third country and the application for international protection was not examined in relation to his/her country of origin.  The Supreme Administrative Court took the view that the issue of international protection could not be dealt with in Lithuania as the grounds for the application were cited as persecution in that same country.  The Administrative Court was ordered  to overturn the Immigration Service’s decision and return the case back for further consideration.

Under Austrian Asylum law, if a minor age cannot be excluded following an age assessment and doubts still exist in favour of the applicant, the authorities have to treat him or her as a minor. In this case, the age of the applicant had not been confirmed as being the age of maturity with absolute certainty and the applicant should therefore have been treated as a minor. The fact that only a copy of the birth certificate was submitted is not a sufficient basis to doubt its authenticity.

The actual risk of inhuman treatment or punishment by the Taliban because of desertion from one of their forced recruitment training camps can justify a deportation ban according to clause 60 (2) of the Residence Act (Article 15(b) of the Qualification Directive) in the case of Afghanistan.
Targeted criminal violence is defined in Article 15 (b) of the Qualification Directive (clause 60 (2) of the Residence Act) but not in Article 15 (c) of the Qualification Directive (clause 60 (7) p. 2 of the Residence Act), because in this context there is no specific risk of an internal armed conflict, i.e. “indiscriminate violence”.  

If a subsequent application for international protection is submitted, the administrative authority must evaluate whether the applicant has presented any new facts that, through no fault of the applicant, had not been the subject of examination in the previous proceeding. Otherwise, the application is inadmissible and the proceedings must be stopped.