Staying put
December 21, 2011
In a move aimed to keep undocumented migrants out of inadequate Greek refugee camps, the European Union's highest court has ruled against international transfers of asylum seekers from one EU country to another where they could face "inhuman treatment."
The squalid, overcrowded conditions of many Greek refugee camps near the Turkish border have raised international concerns in recent years.
On Wednesday, those concerns prompted the European Court of Justice to side with six asylum seekers of Afghan, Algerian and Iranian origin against British and Irish courts wanting to send them back to Greece, their EU point of entry.
EU policy overruled
According to current EU regulations detailed in an agreement called Dublin II, the six migrants - five of whom had applied for asylum in Ireland and one in Britain - would have been transferred back to their country of entry, in this case Greece, to have their requests processed.
However, the Luxembourg-based Court ruled that asylum seekers could not be sent to EU member states where "systemic deficiencies in the asylum procedure and in the reception conditions of asylum seekers“ expose them to "a real risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment."
The court said that EU states could not assume fellow bloc members would protect asylum seekers' rights. EU countries, it added, "have a number of sufficient instruments at their disposal enabling them to assess compliance with fundamental rights" in other nations.
Greece's 90-percent burden
The ruling judges referred to evidence suggesting some 90 percent of the EU's undocumented migrants entered through Greece, putting a "disproportionate burden" on the country.
In 2010, EU countries received some 260,000 requests for asylum, with over 75 percent of them filed in just six of the bloc's 27 member states: Britain, France Germany, Italy, Belgium and Sweden. Asylum is only granted in some 30 percent of cases.
Thursday's decision was not the first to draw conclusions from conditions in Greek camps. At the beginning of this year, the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg stopped Belgium from returning a refugee. Following that decision, Germany announced it would not send asylum seekers back to Greece.
Author: David Levitz (AFP, AP, dpa)
Editor: Michael Lawton