Case summaries

The Constitutional Court presents its opinion on the nature of the rights and principles contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union(CFRU) and on jurisdiction for the decision on questions of interpretation in connection with the CFRU. It gave an answer in the affirmative to the question of whether the CFRU, in particular Article 47 CFRU, is applicable in asylum proceedings if no such violation was found in the actual case at hand.

An acceptance by Poland to take back the applicants was invalid because the Austrian Federal Asylum Office failed to inform Poland of the fact that the applicants have the status of subsidiary protection in Austria. As long as the applicants have this status a Dublin procedure is impossible because they have a legal stay in Austria and cannot be expelled.

The Asylum Court rejected an appeal against the decision to expel the applicant, who has a medical condition, and her daughter to Italy. The situation in Italy was assumed to be in accordance with the Reception Conditions Directive and there was, therefore, no real risk of a violation of Art 3 ECHR. There was no violation of Art 8 ECHR as the applicant’s son had been living in Austria for 10 years, which meant there was no family life worth protecting.

This was an application for an interim injunction preventing the removal of the applicants pending the outcome of their application for leave to apply for judicial review.  The underlying leave application raised several different points, of these, one was deemed arguable: that Ireland’s deportation regime involving a lifetime ban on re-entry is contrary to the ECHR and Irish Constitution.

When detained under conditions that constitute the notion of inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of article 3 ECHR, a person is not criminally responsible for committing the unlawful act of escaping custody.

Contrary to the wording of the corresponding Austrian legislation, an entry ban of at least 18 months which must be issued in every case together with a ban on readmission is not compatible with the Returns Directive without a prior examination on a case-by-case basis. 

After six and a half years of single asylum proceedings, the Applicants, a family with three children who were well-integrated in Austria, , were expelled by the Asylum Court to Armenia. The Constitutional Court revoked this decision on the grounds of a violation of Art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The reasons for this were primarily that the integration of the children was given insufficient weight.

In this case the Tribunal considered the situation of refugee’s fiancé(e)s, who are not covered by the provisions relating to spouses and children. In general their exclusion is unlikely to be proportionate and their claim should succeed under Art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The refusal to grant a right of residence to a third-country national who is a family member of a Union citizen must not lead in fact to the obligation for the latter to leave the territory not only of the Member State of which he is a national but also that of the Union as a whole.

M’s detention pending deportation, for over 2 years and 8 months, was processed without sufficient safeguards against arbitrariness and delay, resulting in four separate violations of the Convention.