M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT
73
345. The Court must therefore now consider whether the Belgian
authorities should have regarded as rebutted the presumption that the Greek
authorities would respect their international obligations in asylum matters,
in spite of the K.R.S. v. the United Kingdom case-law, which the
Government claimed the administrative and judicial authorities had wanted
to follow in the instant case.
346. The Court disagrees with the Belgian Government’s argument that,
because he failed to voice them at his interview, the Aliens Office had not
been aware of the applicant’s fears in the event of his transfer back to
Greece at the time when it issued the order for him to leave the country.
347. The Court observes first of all that numerous reports and materials
have been added to the information available to it when it adopted its
decision in K.R.S. v. the United Kingdom in 2008. These reports and
materials, based on field surveys, all agree as to the practical difficulties
involved in the application of the Dublin system in Greece, the deficiencies
of the asylum procedure and the practice of direct or indirect refoulement on
an individual or a collective basis.
348. The authors of these documents are the UNHCR and the Council of
Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, international non-governmental
organisations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Pro Asyl
and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, and non-governmental
organisations present in Greece such as GHM and the Greek National
Commission for Human Rights (see paragraph 160 above). The Court
observes that such documents have been published at regular intervals since
2006 and with greater frequency in 2008 and 2009, and that most of them
had already been published when the expulsion order against the applicant
was issued.
349. The Court also attaches critical importance to the letter sent by the
UNHCR in April 2009 to the Belgian Minister for Migration and Asylum
Policy. The letter, which states that a copy was also being sent to the Aliens
Office, contained an unequivocal plea for the suspension of transfers to
Greece (see paragraphs 194 and 195 above).
350. Added to this is the fact that since December 2008 the European
asylum system itself has entered a reform phase and that, in the light of the
lessons learnt from the application of the texts adopted during the first
phase, the European Commission has made proposals aimed at substantially
strengthening the protection of the fundamental rights of asylum-seekers
and implementing a temporary suspension of transfers under the Dublin
Regulation to avoid asylum-seekers being sent back to member States
unable to offer them a sufficient level of protection of their fundamental
rights (see paragraphs 77-79 above).
351. Furthermore, the Court notes that the procedure followed by the
Aliens Office in application of the Dublin Regulation left no possibility for
the applicant to state the reasons militating against his transfer to Greece.
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