66 M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT applicant’s request for asylum, and it was therefore not their task to examine the applicant’s fears for his life and his physical safety in Afghanistan. The Dublin Regulation had been drawn up with due regard for the principle of non-refoulement enshrined in the Geneva Convention, for fundamental rights and for the principle that the member States were safe countries. Only in exceptional circumstances, on a case-by-case basis, did Belgium avail itself of the derogation from these principles provided for in Article 3 § 2 of the Regulation, and only where the person concerned showed convincingly that he was at risk of being subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 3. Indeed, that approach was consistent with the Court’s case-law, which required there to be a link between the general situation complained of and the applicant’s individual situation (see, for example, Sultani v. France, no. 45223/05, ECHR 2007-IV; Thampibillai v. the Netherlands, no. 61350/00, 17 February 2004; and Y. v. Russia, no. 20113/07, 4 December 2008). 327. The Belgian Government did not know in exactly what circumstances the sovereignty clause was used, as no statistics were provided by the Aliens Office, and when use was made of it no reasons were given for the decisions. However, in order to show that they did apply the sovereignty clause when the situation so required, the Government produced ten cases where transfers to the country responsible had been suspended for reasons related, by deduction, to the sovereignty clause. In half of those cases Poland was the country responsible for the applications, in two cases it was Greece and in the other cases France and Hungary. In seven cases the reason given was the presence of a family member in Belgium; in two, the person’s health problems; and the last case concerned a minor. In the applicant’s case, Belgium had had no reason to apply the clause and no information showing that he had personally been a victim in Greece of treatment prohibited by Article 3. On the contrary, he had not told the Aliens Office that he had abandoned his asylum application or informed it of his complaints against Greece. Indeed, the Court itself had not considered it necessary to indicate an interim measure to the Belgian Government to suspend the applicant’s transfer. 328. However, the Government pointed out that the order to leave the country had been issued based on the assurance that the applicant would not be sent back to Afghanistan without the merits of his complaints having been examined by the Greek authorities. As regards access to the asylum procedure and the course of that procedure, the Government relied on the assurances given by the Greek authorities that they had finally accepted responsibility, and on the general information contained in the summary document drawn up by the Greek authorities and in the observations Greece had submitted to the Court in other pending cases. The Belgian authorities had noted, based on that information, that if an alien decided to lodge an application for asylum in Greece, the merits of the application would be