Case summaries

The Court considered that the decision-maker should have had taken into consideration the applicant’s alleged vulnerable situation, and as a result ordered the case’s remittal to the Central Administrative Court of Lisbon so evidence could be collected on this.

Following on from a Rule 39 measure from the European Court of Human Rights preventing the transfer of the applicant to Bulgaria under the Dublin Regulation, the Tribunal ordered the police prefect to register the applicant's claim for asylum in France. 

The case concerned the application of a take back request under the the Dublin III Regulation where an asylum applicant has lodged multiple asylum applications in two different Member States and is the subject of a European Arrest Warrant.

The impossibility to proceed with an asylum applicant’s transfer to another Member State responsible for examining the asylum application  is established once there is a clear and real risk for the interested party to be subject to torture or inhuman or degrading treatments within the meaning of articles 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU), even in the absence of having serious reasons to believe there are systemic failures in the Member State’s asylum system. 

In direct application of Art. 15 (2) of the Reception Conditions Directive, according to which asylum applicants must be given effective access to the labour market, the requirements of the Act Governing the Employment of Foreign Nationals (AuslBG) must be modified. The non-existence of a unanimous approval by the Regional Council pursuant to Art. 4 (3) AuslBG does not preclude the granting of employment permits to asylum applicants.

Article 26(1) of the Dublin III Regulation precludes the issuance of a transfer decision by the determining Member-State until the requested Member-State implicitly or explicitly accepts the take charge/back request.

Article 26(1) of the Dublin III Regulation precludes the issuance of a transfer decision by the determining Member-State until the requested Member-State implicitly or explicitly accepts the take charge/back request.

The request submitted by the Italian authorities to Norway to take back the applicant would imply his immediate repatriation to his country of origin, Afghanistan, which, in the light of the Court’s reasoning, is not to be considered a safe country.

The State Secretary has to carefully weigh interests when deciding about the application of Article 17 (discretionary clauses) of the Dublin Regulation where it concerns an adult applicant whose family members are beneficiaries of international protection in this Member State. The fact that an earlier request for family reunification has been refused, does not imply that the potentially destabilizing effect of a Dublin transfer no longer has to be taken into consideration.

The UK Secretary of State for the Home Department’s (SSHD) refusal to accede to a take charge request of a stateless wife and her child in Greece wishing to reunite with their British husband/father in the UK is a breach of Article 7 Charter/8 ECHR (and Article 6(1) of the HRA 1998) on the basis that the SSHD’s decisions were disproportionate and not justified. Notwithstanding that the husband/father is a British citizen, the Dublin Regulation applies, notably Articles 9 and 17(2). In respect of Article 9 Dublin Regulation III, it can be relied upon even where an individual in receipt of international protection subsequently naturalises as a British citizen.