During its meeting on 7 and 8 March, the Justice and Home Affairs Council heard a presentation by the European Commission on the Smart Borders Package, which the Commission had tabled last week. It was also updated on the state of play of the asylum procedures directive and the Eurodac regulation. Issues that remain to be solved in relation to these two legislative proposals concern special procedures for unaccompanied minors and victims of torture and access to Eurodac data by law enforcement authorities.
The Corte Suprema di Cassazione (second grade of appeal only on matters of law) ruled against a decision of the Court of Appeal that overturned the decision of the first instance court (Tribunale) which granted humanitarian protection status to a Tunisian national on grounds of the persecution he would have suffered being gay and Christian (he did not get asylum or subsidiary protection due to his criminal activities).
Eurostat published statistics on asylum decisions by the EU Member States in 2012. The data shows Member States granted protection to more than 100,000 asylum seekers. The highest numbers of grants of protection came from Germany (22,000), Sweden (15,300), the UK (14,600) and France (14,300). Citizens of Syria constituted the largest group of beneficiaries (18%), followed by Afghanistan (13%) and Somalia (8%). A total of 407,300 decisions were made: 274,500 were first instance decisions and 132,800 were appeals.
The applicant is an Algerian national who lives in Sofia. He entered Bulgaria illegally in January 2004 and presented an asylum claim, which was rejected by the asylum authority and by an administrative court. After his temporary residence permit as asylum seeker had expired, his removal was ordered. However, as he did not have any valid travel documents and lacked the means to return to his country of origin, he was placed in a temporary detention centre. He refused to meet representatives of the Algerian Embassy because he feared reprisals.
The official version of a reference by Verwaltungsgerichtshof (Austria) lodged on 20th June 2013 has been published as follows:
Is Article 4(5) of Council Directive 2003/86/EC of 22 September 2003 on the right to family reunification 1 to be interpreted as precluding a provision under which spouses and registered partners must already have reached the age of 21 years at the time at which the application is submitted in order to be considered to be entitled to join other family members?
In December 2012, further negotiations took place on the asylum procedures directive. The Cyprus Presidency presented then compromise proposals for the JHA Counsellors meeting and for the trilogue which took place on December, 17 with the European Commission and the Parliament.
The text of the proposals for the JHA Counsellors meeting can be read here.
The United Kingdom's Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) has held that no inconsistency between the Qualification Directive (and the British legislation implementing it) and the Geneva Convention of 1951 arises from the fact that the former provides for the revocation of asylum status and the second does not contain any provision on revocation of refugee status.
The applicants are an Armenian couple who entered Belgium in 2010 and applied for asylum. At the initial interview aimed at determining their situation regarding the Dublin Regulation, they declared that the parents of one of them lived in Belgium. The Belgian authorities found out that both applicants had obtained visas from the Italian embassy in Armenia before arriving in Belgium, although they had never travelled to Italy. The Belgian authorities ordered the applicants to leave the country.
