Case summaries

The safe third country ground under Article 33(2)(c) of Directive 2013/32 is optional; an application may be declared inadmissible on that basis even if the applicant qualifies for international protection, but it cannot be rejected as unfounded on that ground.

Article 38 requires national law to define criteria establishing a sufficient connection between the applicant and the third country to make transfer reasonable.

Article 38(2)(b) and (c) of Directive 2013/32 permits reliance on publicly available sources and executive lists of safe third countries, provided that national law sets out a methodology for an individualised assessment of safety and allows the applicant to challenge the existence of the required connection.

Courts hearing appeals must verify the existence of such a connection, even if national law does not expressly grant that power.

A three-day time limit, including public holidays and non-working days, for lodging an appeal against a decision rejecting an application for international protection as manifestly unfounded under an accelerated procedure is incompatible with Article 46(4) of the Asylum Procedures Directive where it restricts the effective exercise of the rights guaranteed in Article 12(1)(b) and (2), and Articles 22 and 23 of that Directive.

Account must be taken of the evolution of the circumstances in the country of origin, from the moment of the application for international protection, until the moment when the Court has to take a decision.

In this instance, relying on the change of circumstances that has taken place in Ukraine since the Applicants introduced the demand, the Court grants subsidiary protection status to a Ukrainian family. The current international conflict taking place in Ukraine exposes them to a risk of  serious harm.

Article 40(2) of the Asylum Procedures Directive does not distinguish between initial and subsequent applications for international protection. As such, Member States should not treat the assessment of evidence submitted in subsequent applications different from evidence submitted in a first application. Any document submitted by the applicant in support of his application for international protection must be considered, and the inability to authenticate that document cannot justify the exclusion of such a document from the examination.

National legislation that grants the possibility of rejecting an application made by a third-country national or a stateless person for international protection, whose previous application seeking refugee status in another Member State implementing the Dublin III Regulation had been rejected, is precluded under Article 33(2)(d) of Directive 2013/32 read in conjunction with Article 2(q) thereof. 

Article 27(1) of Dublin III Regulation read in the light of recital 19 thereof, and Article 47 of the Charter preclude national legislation that bars domestic courts from assessing an application for annulment of a Dublin transfer decision by considering circumstances that emerged after the transfer decision was adopted and which are decisive for the correct application of the regulation. However, such circumstances may not be considered if that legislation foresees a specific remedy with ex nunc review that can be exercised after the emergence of the new circumstances is not conditional on the person’s deprivation of liberty or on the imminent implementation of that decision.

The absence of food provision raised an issue of Article 3 in respect of the first applicant, given his state of total dependency on the Hungarian government during his stay at the Röszke transit zone. The physical conditions of the container in which the family stayed in, the unsuitable facilities for children, irregularities in the provision of medical services, and the prolonged stay in the area amounted to a violation of Article 3 in respect of the applicant mother and the children.

The family’s stay at the Röszke transit zone amounted to deprivation of liberty due to, inter alia, the lack of any domestic legal provisions fixing the maximum duration of the applicants’ stay, the excessive duration of the applicants’ stay and the conditions in the transit zone. Their deprivation of liberty was unlawful under Article 5 (1), as there was no strictly defined statutory basis for the applicants’ detention and no formal decision complete with reasons for detention had been issued by the Hungarian authorities.

Article 5 (4) was also violated because he applicants did not have avenue in which the lawfulness of their detention could have been decided promptly by a court.

When analysing if protection from UNRWA has ceased (Article 12(1)(a) Directive 2011/95), account must be taken of the possibility for the individual to concretely access effective protection in any of the other fields within UNRWA area of operations.

Assistance from the Agency must be considered as maintained when an individual has left UNRWA area of operations from a field where he couldn’t obtain effective protection, if the person had previously voluntarily left a field where he could access UNRWA’s assistance, even though he could reasonably foresee, according to the information available for him at the moment of departure, that he wouldn’t be able to receive effective protection from the Agency in the field he was travelling to, or return to the field of origin in the short term.

The reception conditions for beneficiaries of international protection in Bulgaria are such that they may face severe material deprivation due to “indifference” on the part of the authorities (cfr. CJEU, Ibrahim), potentially amounting to a violation of Article 3 ECHR / Article 4 CFREU.

When the State Secretary decides that a request for international protection is not admissible, because the applicants have refugee status in Bulgaria, it is not sufficient for him to refer to the principle of mutual trust between EU Member States and to the Council of State’s jurisprudence, but he is obliged to examine the applicant’ s individual circumstances and to obtain specific information and guarantees from the Bulgarian authorities.

The CJEU found that the judge assigned to rule upon the applicant’s detention should have transmitted his request for international protection to the competent authority so it could be registered, and the applicant could enjoy his rights provided by Directive 2013/33. It also found that he should not have been detained since he was protected by his applicant for international protection’s status under Directives 2013/33 and 2013/32.