Case summaries
This case related to a dispute as to whether the UK or Belgium had responsibility for determining the applicant’s asylum claim
This was an appeal against the decision to transfer an asylum applicant to Poland. The Council of State rejected the applicant’s claim that he was not informed about the Dublin procedure in a language intelligible to him, as the applicant had indicated he understood Russian and an interpreter had been provided. Moreover, the circumstances necessary to apply Art 3(2) Dublin Regulation had not been met.
In the particular circumstances of the present case, the transfer of the asylum applicants to Greece would lead to a serious and manifestly illegal infringement of the right of asylum.
The failure to respect the procedural guarantees provided under Article 3.4 of the Dublin II Regulation constitutes a serious and manifestly illegal infringement of the right of asylum.
An intervention by the French urgent applications judge [juge des référés] on the grounds of urgency is not considered until a decision on a transfer of an asylum applicant under the Dublin Regulation has been made. In this case, the asylum applicant was not yet subject to a transfer decision and there was therefore no particular need for an urgent intervention within the 48-hour period, as provided by article L.521-2 of the French Code on Administrative Justice.
The presence of an adult asylum applicant’s sibling in an EU Member State entails no obligation for that State to apply Art 7 Dublin Regulation, as siblings are not included in the definition of family members in Art 2(i). This was the case even though the applicant’s brother had been granted refugee status and, subsequently, citizenship in France.