Case summaries
The Court ruled that under national law the authorities are obliged to issue a decision on discontinuing the procedure if another Member State is responsible for the application. The provision leaves no margin of discretion. The authorities had no obligation to examine the way that the other State treats asylum seekers, if it is a Member State of the EU and applies European standards of dealing with third country nationals.
In the situation where the other State decided to accept the responsibility and examine the application, it should be understood that they examined its admissibility in the light of the Dublin II Regulation, taking into account the time that the applicant spent away from that State.
The Council of State denied the Applicants’ appeal against the decision made by the Board of the Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) to include Georgia and the Republic of Albania in the list of safe countries of origin because, amongst other things, these countries are democratic institutions and are parties to the ECHR.
The Council of State granted the Applicants’ appeal against the decision made by the Board of OFPRA to include the Republic of Kosovo in the list of safe countries of origin because, amongst other things, the country’s political and social contexts were unstable and some segments of the population were subject to violence without sufficient police protection.
A case may be re-examined in substance by the CNDA, if the facts referred to by the Applicant took place after the last decision of the CNDA or if it is proven that the Applicant could not have been aware of them prior to the previous court decision.
A person who has been a member of an armed unit which has committed systematic violence, and who has not attempted to prevent it or be dissociated from the other members is personally guilty and therefore cannot be granted the refugee status.
The right to court, which includes the principle of contradictoriness and its essential element – the possibility to get acquainted with the information in possession of the authority or the court – is not a value overriding other values protected by the national legal order.
Such an understanding is reflected in EU law – Article 13 para 1 of the Returns Directive.
In the opinion of the Court it is not inconsistent with Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, bearing in mind Article 52 para. 1.
Disclosing concrete information gathered by a specialised agency, responsible for state security, enables identification of the source of information, so it can pose a threat to other persons or even exclude the possibility of obtaining any further relevant information.
In this situation, taking into account the need to protect state security there are limitations which impact upon the procedural rights of a person. However these are justifiable on account of public interest.
Hungary’s practice of not suspending its deportation procedures for second time asylum applicants amounts to a serious and unlawful interference with an applicant’s constitutionally guaranteed right to apply for refugee status.
The Supreme Court held that an immigrant whose passport or equivalent identity document reveals their minority cannot be subjected to additional tests in order to determine his age unless a proportionality judgment about the document’s reliability has first been carried out. The Court also held that medical techniques to determine an age cannot be applied indiscriminately.
The Aliens Litigation Court has cancelled a judgment by the Secretary of State for Asylum, Migration and for Social Integration, which refuses leave to remain to a Cameroon national with an order of expulsion to Cyprus, the first European State through which the applicant entered.
The decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court allowed a Dublin transfer of a woman and her infant child to Italy stating that the applicants did not sufficiently substantiate that they were at risk of living on the streets when returned to Italy.
The competent authority has to provide suitable guarantees to ensure the well-being of the infant applicant when returned to Italy.
A claim challenging the refusal to grant a visa -in order to claim asylum on French territory- qualifies as being urgent. The consular authority is not qualified to assess the asylum claim.
The ECtHR has unanimously held that Belgium, in extraditing a Tunisian national to the US, where he was under prosecution on charges linked to Al-Qaeda, without any regard to the interim Rule 39 measure issued by the Court suspending the extradition, had violated both Article 3 and Article 34 (right to individual applications)of the ECHR.