Case summaries

Processing an appeal without a hearing, on application of Article 91(2) of the Foreigners Act (2000), is not in breach of Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The seven year time lapse since the Sunni Muslim Applicant’s former service in the Iraqi army, no evidence of future risk arising from previous injuries, and no medical reasons preventing return, led the majority to find that return to Iraq would not violate the applicants rights under Articles 2 or 3.

Internal contradictions in the Sunni Muslim Applicant’s account, coupled with the time lapse since the relevant acts of persecution, led the majority to conclude that his return to Iraq, despite former employment with US-backed security companies, would not violate Articles 2 or 3.

The reasonable possibility of relocation to the Anbar governorate rendered a Sunni Muslim’s return to Iraq Article 3 compliant in spite of the personal risk he faced in Baghdad from a blood feud. His former membership of the Ba’ath party and military service was no longer regarded as a threat by the Court.

The contested judgment is unconstitutional as it does not provide a clear way of assessing the jurisdiction of the third country when dealing with the application. It also reveals that the situation of the Applicant for international protection is unclear in the event that the application is rejected by the third country and the Applicant is not allowed to enter its territory, and shows that it is unclear as to what the Applicant can contest in this procedure.

An efficient legal system that would stop the extradition to a country in which the Applicant could be exposed to inhuman treatment has to have suspensive effect.

The interest of an applicant to obtain a temporary stay from deportation to Italy for the time being predominates, if the applicant, in case of his return back to Italy, would be threatened with serious damage to his health due to inadequate accommodation opportunities there and because medical care would not be guaranteed due to a permanent overstretch of resources.

This ruling concerned the scope of judicial review when reviewing compliance with the criterion of Article 10(1) for determining responsibility for examining an asylum application under Regulation 343/2003. The Court held that Art. 19(2) of the Regulation must be interpreted as meaning that, in circumstances where a Member State has agreed to take charge of an applicant for asylum on the basis of the Art. 10(1) criterion the only way in which the applicant for asylum can call into question the choice of that criterion is by pleading systemic deficiencies in the asylum procedure and in the conditions for the reception of applicants for asylum in that Member State, which provide substantial grounds for believing that the applicant for asylum would face a real risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Art. 4 of the Charter.

A transfer in accordance with the Dublin Regulation does not require the Swedish Migration Board to investigate ex officio whether there are deficiencies in the asylum system in Italy. The transfer does, however, breach the right to a family life, in accordance with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

It is not the case that in autumn 2008 the Austrian authorities ought to have known that serious deficiencies in the Greek asylum system risked a violation of the Applicant’s Article 3 rights if transferred to Greece under the Dublin procedure.

An application for international protection lodged by an Afghan who illegally entered Austria was rejected. The Court found that the applicant had no well-founded fear of persecution in his country of origin nor was he to be granted the subsidiary protection status.