62 M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT 307. Also, it must be said that the applicant was far from the only one to have misinterpreted the notice and that many asylum-seekers do not go to the police headquarters because they have no address to declare. 308. Moreover, even if the applicant did receive the information brochure, the Court shares his view that the text is very ambiguous as to the purpose of the convocation (see paragraph 112 above), and that nowhere is it stated that asylum-seekers can inform the Attica police headquarters that they have no address in Greece, so that information can be sent to them through another channel. 309. In such conditions, the Court considers that the Government can scarcely rely on the applicant’s failure to comply with this formality and that they should have proposed a reliable means of communicating with the applicant so that he could follow the procedure effectively. 310. Next, the Court notes that the parties agree that the applicant’s asylum request has not yet been examined by the Greek authorities. 311. According to the Government, this situation is due at present to the fact that the applicant did not keep the appointment on 2 July 2010 to be interviewed by the refugee advisory committee. The Government have not explained the impact of that missed appointment on the progress of the domestic proceedings. Be that as it may, the applicant informed the Court, through his counsel, that the convocation had been given to him in Greek when he renewed his “pink card”, and that the interpreter had made no mention of any date for an interview. Although not in a position to verify the truth of the matter, the Court again attaches more weight to the applicant’s version, which reflects the serious lack of information and communication affecting asylum-seekers. 312. In such conditions, the Court does not share the Government’s view that the applicant, by his own actions, failed to give the domestic authorities an opportunity to examine the merits of his complaints and that he has not been affected by the deficiencies in the asylum procedure. 313. The Court concludes that to date the Greek authorities have not taken any steps to communicate with the applicant or reached any decision in his case, offering him no real and adequate opportunity to defend his application for asylum. What is more, the Court takes note of the extremely low rate of asylum or subsidiary protection granted by the Greek authorities compared with other European Union member States (see paragraphs 125-26 above). The importance to be attached to statistics varies, of course, according to the circumstances, but in the Court’s view they tend here to strengthen the applicant’s argument concerning his loss of faith in the asylum procedure. 314. The Court is not convinced by the Greek Government’s explanations concerning the policy of returns to Afghanistan organised on a voluntary basis. It cannot ignore the fact that forced returns by Greece to high-risk countries have regularly been denounced by the third-party