The request for a preliminary ruling from the Austrian Asylum Court (Bundesasylamt) concerns a Somali national who entered the EU through Greece and applied for asylum in Austria after having transited through Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary. The national court raised three questions concerning the Dublin Regulation, which the Advocate GeneralCruz Villalón proposes the Court to answer to in the following manner.
On 6 April a series of changes to the British immigration legislation will come into force. They concern various issues, among them the leave to remain granted to unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors. The length of leave will be reduced from 36 to 30 months or until the minor reaches the age of 17 and a half. Leave to remain will cease in the case of misrepresentation or omission of facts which led to the initial grant.
Statewatch has published an analysis of the completion of the second phase of the Common European Asylum System by Professor Steven Peers. The analysis concludes that the second-phase legislation brings about "very limited improvements as regards reception conditions, modest improvements as regards procedures and qualification, no real improvement as regards the Dublin rules and a significant reduction in standards as regards Eurodac". It also underlines that not only harmonised legislation is needed to achieve real common standards, but also a more coherent and vigorous enforcement.
The document sets out what has happened since 8 March 2012 when the Council approved Council Conclusions on a common framework for solidarity mechanisms. It also states that the Commission has announced that it will invite Member States’ experts to a meeting on solidarity issues in January 2013. The objective of this meeting will be to prepare the solidarity part of the next Annual Report on Immigration and Asylum, in particular by collecting information about Member States’ needs and achievements.
The main proceedings concern three unaccompanied minors who applied for asylum in the United Kingdom after having previously lodged asylum applications in the Netherlands and Italy. The British authorities decided first to send them back to those countries in application of the Dublin Regulation, but later they ruled that the UK would take responsibility for their applications under the sovereignty clause. However, the minors did not withdraw the appeals they had lodged against the initial decision to sent them back.
The case concerns the Russian authorities’ alleged secret transfer of an Uzbek national, detained in Russia with a view to his extradition to his country of origin, despite the European Court of Human Rights’s indication (under Rule 39 - interim measures) to the Russian Government that no extradition should take place until further notice. The applicant, Murodzhon Abdulkhakov, is an Uzbek national who was born in 1979 and is currently in hiding in Tajikistan.
UNHCR has published its full report on credibility assessment in EU asylum systems. The report provides an insight into state practices concerning the assessment of credibility in asylum procedures and seeks to contribute to their further harmonisation in view of the significant discrepancies existing between member states and within national jurisdictions as regards the outcomes of such assessment.
UNHCR has published the 2012 edition of the Global Trends Report, its leading annual report on the state of forced displacement in the world. The report documents the highest figures of displaced persons in the past 18 years, reaching 45.2 million people of whom 15.4 are refugees and almost a million asylum seekers. During 2012 7.6 million persons became newly displaced. The report indicates that 81% of the world's refugees are hosted by developing countries. 46% of the world's refugees are children with the number of unaccompanied or separated children increasing.
The factsheet on the Court's case law concerning the protection of minors was updated this month. It contains information on some cases dealing with detention of minors and migrant children and is available at the Court's website.
On 27 November the LIBE Committee of the European Parliament approved the draft text of the EUROSUR regulation. Negotiations with the European Council are now bound to start with a view to making the system operational as of 1 October 2013. EUROSUR will be a new border surveillance system designed to improve the monitoring, detection, identification, tracking, prevention and interception of illegal border crossings and it will serve as an information exchange system with the EU Member States and FRONTEX.
