Case summaries

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.

Detention beyond the period for which an individual would otherwise need to be detained pursuant to Schedule 2 § 16(1) for the purpose of an age assessment that will or doesn’t comply with applicable legal standards would be unlawful. Also, both common law and section 55 of the BCIA 2009 require a fair and careful process involving appropriate safeguards, which the Guidance doesn’t provide and is also inconsistent with the Secretary of State for the Home Department (SSHD) pre-existing polices.

The assessment for a well-founded fear of persecution under the Refugee Convention must have regard to Country-of-Origin information and reports.  Moreover, if the publication of the applicant’s name will have no adverse effect on either him or his family, the appellant’s private life rights, protected by article 8 ECHR, will not outweigh the public interest in open justice, as protected by article 10 ECHR.

The High Court found that the Tribunal failed to ask itself the correct legal questions when assessing the issue of state protection in the applicants’ country of origin.

In specific, the High Court found that the Tribunalfailed to apply the correct approach to the ‘state protection test’ found in section 31 of the International Protection Act, 2015, by not seeking to establish whether an effective system of protection is in place, which is non-temporary in nature and which involves the taking of reasonable steps to protect those who otherwise faced a real risk of persecution or serious harm.

In this case the Upper Tribunal provided that the Refugee Convention doesn’t offer protection from social conservatism and that there is no protected right to enjoy a socially liberal lifestyle. However, the Convention may be considered to apply where  ‘westernisation’ reflects a protected characteristic such as political opinion or religious belief, or if there is a real risk that the individual in question would be unable to mask his westernisation and persecutors would impute such protected characteristics to him. 

With regard to the granting of subsidiary protection, the existence of real risks to the rights under Art. 2, 3 ECHR must be examined, which includes the obligation to consider ongoing developments on the basis of available information. If a deterioration of the security situation is disregarded, this could be seen as arbitrariness.

The State Secretariat of Migration (SSM) is obliged to assess the proportionality of a cessation measure in a case of a granted temporary residence in Switzerland. It was concluded that the cessation of temporary residence is not proportionate, when the applicant showed considerable efforts to integrate in the host community such as learning languages and practicing several internships to obtain a job in that country. His return would hamper all those integration efforts.

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 Supreme Court of Ireland handed down a judgment concerning the question whether the Minister for Justice and Equality is obliged to revoke a deportation order or otherwise facilitate a person to enter the State, when that person has been granted consent to make a subsequent application for international protection under section 22 of the International Protection Act 2015, which requires the person's presence in the State to make the application. It was held that there is no express right to enter the State for the purposes of making an application, save where the person is at its frontiers.

The governmental authority is requesting an authorization to detain an immigrant after an alleged infraction of article 53 of the Organic Law 4/2000 in order to guarantee the enforcement of a possible return procedure. Following the procedures detailed in article 62 of said law, the Court assessed the particular circumstances of the case, including the risk of nonappearance and the possible existence of previous administrative sanctions of the subject, concluding that the lack of roots in the Spanish territory and the fact that he already filled in an asylum application show that the detention is not necessary in this case.