Case summaries

Hungary does not guarantee the respect of asylum procedures. The transfer must be halted in accordance with article 3 of the Dublin Regulation (EU) No 604/2013.

The judgment’s motivation must be based on more than one source if others are available.

The applicant had sufficiently established that if returned to Hungary under the Dublin Regulation he would not benefit from an examination of his asylum application in line with procedural guarantees as required by the right to asylum. Such a transfer decision thus violated Article 4 of the Charter.

A general circular letter send by Italian authorities is not a sufficient individual guarantee regarding a Dublin Transfer of a man suffering from various serious diseases.

A renewed application for asylum in a second country is admissible if the nature of international protection applied for differs from the protection already granted. Deportation to the country of the first application or the country of origin is not to be taken into account in this situation.

The High Court in this case focused on two questions: 1) whether the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s (RAT) finding of a lack of a Convention nexus was valid, given the evidence before it, and 2) whether the RAT’s finding that the persecution faced by the applicant in the past does not amount to “compelling reasons” meriting a grant of refugee status was valid. The Court agreed with the Tribunal Member on the second question, finding that she had appropriately evaluated the applicant’s circumstances in light of the relevant guidelines, case law and evidence in rejecting the applicant’s claim for protection based on past persecution. However, the Court ultimately quashed the RAT’s decision in its findings on the first question, deducing that the RAT had failed to address all relevant aspects of the country of origin information that had been submitted by the applicant.

Asylum seekers cannot be rejected at the border crossing without having the possibility to state reasons for obtaining international protection as well as a precise indication of reasons for the refusal of entry on the entry form. An assessment of the submitted reasons for asylum cannot only depend on an assessment by an interpreter, but must be decided through the responsible authority or court.

In order to protect the security of state and public order, it is justifiable to limit freedoms and rights, including the right to court. The right to court covers the possibility to access case files by the party of the proceedings as well as the possibility to get to know the motives of the decision and formulate allegations against them. When there is a need to protect the security of state and public order, the rights of the party of the proceedings are limited. The party cannot get to know the motives of the decisions and has to rely on the fair judgement of the authority.

The courts as well as the administrative authorities got to know the motives of the decision and had a possibility to verify them in the context of the legal conditions in return proceedings. Their assessment is binding and sufficient. Assessment of the authorities is subject to control of legality in administrative court proceedings, so it cannot be stated that the actions of the authority are out of control.

The Supreme Administrative Court rules that Article 12(1)2 of the Return Directive which allows for non-disclosure of certain facts of the return decision for the reasons of national security is a specific law applicable in return cases and to that extent it excludes the general safeguards envisaged in Article 47 of the Charter.

The issue to be decided in this case was whether the applicant was entitled to judicial review of the decision of the Refugee Applications Commissioners, or whether her complaints could be adequately addressed on appeal to the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. 

This Court case confirms the obligation on the part of the decision-maker to make a clear finding regarding the applicant’s ethnicity, and to conduct a forward-looking assessment when assessing the well-founded nature of his fear. 

The Court quashed the decision of the Office of Immigration and Nationality (OIN) because it did not assess the Applicant’s fear of persecution in a due manner and held that there is a real internal flight alternative in an erroneous way, without due regard to the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU)