Case summaries

The Federal Administrative Court has to clarify whether the petition for action directed solely at the obligation to decide on the asylum application is admissible. The question if it is also possible to directly oblige the defendant to grant international protection or to establish prohibitions on deportation by means of an action is not the subject of the decision. As a result, the court comes to the conclusion that there was a delay by the respondent of providing the decision on the asylum application without sufficient reason and that the plaintiff has a need for legal protection for its action for failure to act.

The provisions of the Asylum Procedures Directive have been fully transposed into the CESEDA. A decision of the OFPRA based on all the documents/ evidence submitted by the applicant in support of his subsequent application without an interview does not infringe Article 41(2) of the Charter. When OFPRA considered the subsequent application, it was legitimate for it to have rejected the application without any interview since the new documents/ evidence provided were without merits. The Court found that M.A’s application must be rejected without any need to re-examine the facts he submitted, including those in his first application. The application of M.A was rejected.

Refugee status was recognised for a transgender woman from Pakistan because discrimination for reasons relevant to asylum as well as involuntary prostitution to earn a living are sufficiently serious to represent persecution within the meaning of the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

An Egyptian transgender woman, who first underwent gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatment in Austria, was recognised as a refugee as it was accepted that there were problems with the police,  a refusal to issue her a passport using her new personal data and social issues of an intensity relevant to asylum matters.