Case summaries

Given the condition of Greek health care, a person with a neurological condition, who requires medical follow-up and who has a family, may rightfully invoke Article 3 ECHR to block her, and her family’s, transfer to Greece. 

The applicant’s complaint is based on the allegation that her father had not left Finland voluntarily but had been forced to return to Iraq because of the decisions already taken by the Finnish authorities. Those decisions, therefore, engaged the responsibility of Finland for having exposed the applicant’s father to a real risk of death, which ended up happening. Finland’s actions amounted to a violation of Articles 2 and 3 ECHR.

The State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) must carry out an individualised examination to determine whether there are substantial grounds for believing that the asylum procedure of the Member State where the applicant shall be transferred to has systemic weaknesses that would entail a risk of inhuman treatment or chain deportation.

Detention in police stations, places that by their very nature are designed to accommodate people for very short durations, may amount to degrading and inhuman conditions under Art. 3 ECHR if protracted for a long time.

Detention of a person with a view to deportation is contrary to Art. 5 § 1 (f) if unlawful under the Convention or domestic law. 

The CJEU ruled that an asylum applicant may not be transferred under the Dublin III Regulation to the Member State responsible for processing their application if the living conditions would expose them to a situation of extreme material poverty amounting to inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 4 CFR. In this regard, the Court held that the threshold was only met where such deficiencies attained a particularly high level of severity beyond a high degree of insecurity or significant degradation of living conditions. Correspondingly, national courts had the obligation to examine, based on information that is objective, reliable, specific and properly updated and having regard to the standard of protection of fundamental rights guaranteed by EU law, whether there was a real risk for the applicant to find himself in such situation of extreme material poverty.

An act of absconding withing the meaning of Dublin III may be presumed when the applicant has left the accommodation allocated to them without informing the competent authorities, provided that they have been informed of this obligation, unless the applicant provides valid reasons for not informing the authorities. 

The CJEU ruled that an asylum seeker may not be transferred to the Member State that has previously granted him international protection if such living conditions would expose the applicant to a situation of extreme material poverty. The threshold was only met where such deficiencies attained a particularly high level of severity, going beyond a high degree of insecurity or significant degradation of living conditions.

The Court further clarified that this threshold also applied where there were infringements of the provisions of the Qualification Directive, including the level of the subsistence allowance granted to beneficiaries of subsidiary protection. 

Lastly, the CJEU added that the fact that the Member State that granted subsidiary protection systematically refuses, without real examination, to grant refugee status does not prevent the other Member States from rejecting a further application submitted to them by the person concerned as being inadmissible.

Delays in the asylum procedure which cannot be imputed to the asylum seeker, and failure to consider less coercive alternatives when detention exceeds reasonable time limits, render detention unlawful.

The extension of the transfer period in accordance with Art. 29 para. 2 sentence 2 Dublin Regulation (EU) No. 604/2013 (Dublin III Regulation) requires that the asylum applicant absconds, which has to be proven by the transferring authority.

Absconding is only the case, if the asylum applicant cannot be reached by the competent authorities for an (undefined) longer period of time. The intention to evade the authorities does not have to be proven. The circumstances of the individual case are decisive.

When a refugee and their child apply for international protection, the Police Headquarters shall not make residence or parental relationship the conditions for submitting their application.

Foreign asylum seekers without employment have a right to be exempted from the payment of health care contributions under Art. 8(16) of Law No. 537/1993, irrespective of whether they are seeking a job for the first time or have worked in the past. The entitlement to this benefit depends solely on the condition of “non-employment” under Art. 19(1), (2) and (7) of Legislative Decree 150/2015 and to the declaration by the non-employed individual of their availability to work. Denying this benefit to jobless asylum seekers amounts to discrimination.