Case summaries
The detention conditions, to which the applicants had been subjected to in police stations, while being under protective custody as unaccompanied minors, violated Article 3 ECHR. Violation of Article 3 in conjunction with Article 13 on account of the applicants’ inability to bring a complaint against the detention conditions.
Their placement in protective custody was an unlawful detention measure under Article 5, as there were no time limits, no vulnerability assessment and no consideration of this form of custody as one of last resort. The applicants had no possibility to exercise their rights under Article 5 (4), as they could not establish contact with their lawyer and the lack of official detainee status would have raised practical obstacles in any attempt to challenge their detention.
The Court indicated interim measures (under Rule 39) to Russia after the order of removal of a Syrian national who applied for asylum after the expiry of his student visa. Subsequently, the applicant applied to the Court against the Russian Federation claiming that Russia had breached his rights under Articles 2, 3, 5(1)(f) and 5(4) of the Convention.
The refusal of an entry decision given to an unaccompanied child at the Franco-Italian border is manifestly unlawful and constitutes a severe breach of the applicant’s interest.
In the case of doubts about family relationships, both the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum (BFA) and the Austrian embassy abroad must for the purpose of family reunification enable applicants to have a DNA-analysis carried out at their request and inform them of this possibility. The purpose of this DNA-analysis is to enable the applicant to eliminate existing doubts about a family relationship and thus to achieve family reunification.
In cases of deportation to a third country, the competent authority is required to assess, on a case-by-case basis, if the third country offers effective legal protection against deportation to the state of origin.
In the case of a Turkish journalist of Kurdish origin, the competent authority had only insufficiently assessed if the applicant enjoys sufficient legal protection in Brazil against refoulment to Turkey. It therefore violated her right to be heard.
The authorities followed an incorrect interpretation of the Dublin Regulation 604/2013 failing to take into account that the older applicant is the brother of the minor and should remain in Hungary under Article 10 of the Regulation, despite having lodged an application in Bulgaria.
The Appellant applied for asylum in Sweden on the basis of being a refugee as per his registration at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Alternatively the appellant argued that his need for protection should be judged against his previous residency in in Syria. The main issue faced by the court was whether the appellant’s normal place of residence should be considered as Syria or Algeria, and thus against which of these two countries the appellant’s need for protection should be judged.
The Court deemed Algeria to be the appellant’s normal place of residence based on his formal and non-formal ties to the country as well as his 18 months stay in the Algeria prior to coming to Sweden. Based on this the court did not deem the appellant to have the required need for protection and denied his appeal.
The ECtHR ruled that there had not been a violation of Article 5(1) ECHR in the applicant’s detention at the VIAL hotspot, a day after the entry into force of the EU-Turkey Statement. It also ruled that the threshold of severity required for their detention conditions to be considered as inhuman or degrading treatment had not been reached.
However, the ECtHR found that Greece violated the applicant’s rights under Article 5(2) by not providing them with detailed, understandable information about the reasons for their detention and the remedies available to them.
The carrying out of a transfer does not, in itself, definitively establish the responsibility of the Member State to which the person concerned has been transferred.
A Member State, to which an applicant has returned after being transferred, is not allowed to transfer that person anew to the requested Member State without respecting a take back procedure. In those circumstances, a take back request must be submitted within the periods prescribed in Article 24(2) of the Dublin III Regulation, which begins to run from the time the requesting Member State becomes aware of the presence of the person concerned on its territory.
National authorities can order experts’ reports with the purpose of assisting in the assessment of the facts and circumstances relating to a declared sexual orientation of an applicant, provided that the procedures for these reports are consistent with fundamental rights. However, the examining authority, courts or tribunal must not base their decision solely on the conclusions of an expert’s report and are not bound by these conclusions when assessing the applicant’s statements relating to his or her sexual orientation.
Moreover, national authorities are prohibited from preparing and using, in order to assess the veracity of a claim made by an applicant concerning his sexual orientation, of a psychologist’s expert report the purpose of which is, on the basis of a projective personality test, to provide an indication of the sexual orientation of the applicant.