68 M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT 331. The Government of the United Kingdom emphasised that the Dublin Regulation afforded a fundamental advantage in speeding up the examination of applications, so that the persons concerned did not have time to develop undue social and cultural ties in a State. That being so, it should be borne in mind that calling to account under Article 3 the State responsible for the asylum application prior to the transfer, as in the present case, was bound to slow down the whole process no end. The Government of the United Kingdom were convinced that such complaints, which were understandable in cases of expulsion to a State not bound by the Convention, should be avoided when the State responsible for handling the asylum application was a party to the Convention. In such cases, as the Court had found in K.R.S. v. the United Kingdom (cited above), the normal interpretation of the Convention would mean the interested parties lodging their complaints with the courts in the State responsible for processing the asylum application and subsequently, perhaps, to the Court. According to the United Kingdom Government, this did not absolve the transferring States of their responsibility for potential violations of the Convention, but it meant that their responsibility could be engaged only in wholly exceptional circumstances where it was demonstrated that the persons concerned would not have access to the Court in the State responsible for dealing with the asylum application. No such circumstances were present in the instant case, however. 332. In the opinion of the UNHCR, as they had already stated in their report published in April 2008, asylum-seekers should not be transferred when, as in the present case, there was evidence that the State responsible for processing the asylum application effected transfers to high-risk countries; that the persons concerned encountered obstacles in their access to asylum procedures, to the effective examination of their applications and to an effective remedy; and where the reception conditions could result in a violation of Article 3 of the Convention. Not transferring asylum-seekers in these conditions was provided for in the Dublin Regulation itself and was fully in conformity with Article 33 of the Geneva Convention and with the Convention. The UNHCR stressed that this was not a theoretical possibility and that, unlike in Belgium, the courts in certain States had suspended transfers to Greece for the above-mentioned reasons. In any event, as the Court had clearly stated in the T.I. v. the United Kingdom case (cited above), each Contracting State remained responsible under the Convention for not exposing people to treatment contrary to Article 3 through the automatic application of the Dublin system. 333. The AIRE Centre and Amnesty International considered that in its present form, without a clause on the suspension of transfers to countries unable to honour their international obligations in asylum matters, the Dublin Regulation exposed asylum-seekers to a risk of refoulement in breach of the Convention and the Geneva Convention. They pointed out

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents