Case summaries

In determining the lawfulness of continued detention after a breach of defence rights, the domestic authorities must ask whether, in light of all factual and legal circumstances, the outcome of the administrative procedure at issue could have been different if the third-country nationals in question had been able to put forward information which might show that their detention should be brought to an end.

In the procedure for extending subsidiary protection all reasons that the Applicant stated in his application for international protection are relevant and not merely the reasons on the basis of which subsidiary protection was recognised.

The Helsinki Administrative Court took the view that a residence permit had to be granted to an Afghan asylum seeker on the grounds of subsidiary protection due a threat of vendetta based on a land dispute.

This was a decision of the Polish Refugee Board of 29 August 2013 to uphold that part of the decision of the Head of the Polish Office for Foreigners which concerned refusal to accord refugee status and to overturn the remainder of the decision as well as to grant subsidiary protection.

The results of the linguistic analysis carried out by an external expert company should be assessed in the context of all the evidence gathered in the case, taking into account the principle of the benefit of doubt, also as regards establishing the country of origin.

Certain inaccuracies in the detail actually lend credibility to the testimony. This is evident particularly if one takes into account the fact that the foreign woman is a simple person without any education.

In the case of a Palestinian stateless asylum-seeker from Lebanon, the Court found the objection of the OIN (that was otherwise unverified by documents and based on which the decision to reject was made) to be unfounded, and recognised the Applicant as refugee. The Court emphasized that any procedure where the contents of the objection concerning a matter of national security are not subject to review, is arbitrary and seriously contradicts the principles of the rule of law as it makes the right to an effective remedy meaningless.

In this case there was a serious risk that the Applicants’ asylum claims, which in principle should have been readmitted in Hungary in accordance with the Dublin II Regulation, would not be dealt with by the Hungarian authorities in accordance with all the guarantees required by the respect for the right to asylum. The French authorities therefore needed to grant them a temporary right of residence for asylum-related reasons.

A man from Cameroon whom the UNHCR considered a refugee and granted permanent leave to remain in Sweden as a quota refugee was refused his application for refugee status and travel documents.

A bad situation in the country of origin does not constitute a sufficient intrinsic reason to accord refugee status or other forms of protection.

One cannot question the credibility of an applicant solely on the basis of a discrepancy between the information stated in the application and the information provided in subsequent stages of the proceedings.

The Respondent erred if, in a procedure on the extension of subsidiary protection, it failed to examine the threats to safety for repariated Afghan nationals. The Respondent,within the context of finding the facts, had completely failed to examine evidence of the existence of serious harm within the meaning of Section 2(f)(2) of the Asylum Act (torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment), and thus failed to address the question of whether, in the event of the Appellant returning (as a person who had left Afghanistan) to his country of origin, he would not also be at risk of this form of serious harm. The Respondent took no evidence in respect of this, which is contrary to the provisions of Section13a of the Asylum Act. Moreover, its actions were thus contrary to its own established practice, whereby, in (standard) proceedings on applications for international protection, it routinely ascertains the behaviour of state authorities in relation to unsuccessful asylum applicants or other groups of repatriated persons returning to their country of origin. 

In order for subsidiary protection to be provided, the law requires not just a fear but a well-founded fear. This means that a fear of persecution must be real and not fictional. If the genuine nature of an appellant’s fear were to be accepted on the basis of an outline provided to the Respondent in proceedings to extend subsidiary protection, it would lead to a situation where almost all nationals of countries in which any kind of conflict was taking place - even a local one not directly affecting most of the population - would have to be regarded, without further grounds for acceptance, as persons in respect of whom there were serious grounds for believing that they would be exposed to a real risk of serious harm in the event of returning to the country of origin.