M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT 65 A. The parties’ submissions 1. The applicant 324. The applicant submitted that at the time of his expulsion the Belgian authorities had known that the asylum procedure in Greece was so deficient that his application for asylum had little chance of being seriously examined by the Greek authorities and that there was a risk of him being sent back to his country of origin. In addition to the numerous international reports already published at the time of his expulsion, his lawyer had clearly explained the situation regarding the systematic violation of the fundamental rights of asylum-seekers in Greece. He had done this in support of the appeal lodged with the Aliens Appeals Board on 29 May 2009 and also in the appeal lodged with the Indictments Division of the Brussels Court of Appeal on 10 June 2009. The applicant considered that the Belgian authorities’ argument that he could not claim to have been a victim of the deficiencies in the Greek asylum system before coming to Belgium was irrelevant. In addition to the fact that formal proof of this could not be adduced in abstracto and before the risk had materialised, the Belgian authorities should have taken the general situation into account and not taken the risk of sending him back. 325. In the applicant’s opinion, in keeping with what had been learnt from the T.I. v. the United Kingdom case (cited above), the application of the Dublin Regulation did not dispense the Belgian authorities from verifying whether sufficient guarantees against refoulement existed in Greece, with regard to the deficiencies in the procedure or the policy of direct or indirect refoulement to Afghanistan. Without such guarantees and in view of the evidence adduced by the applicant, the Belgian authorities themselves should have verified the risk the applicant faced in his country of origin, in accordance with Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention and with the Court’s case-law (see, in particular, NA. v. the United Kingdom, no. 25904/07, 17 July 2008). In this case, however, the Belgian Government had taken no precautions before deporting him. On the contrary, the decision to deport him had been taken solely on the basis of the presumption – by virtue of the tacit acceptance provided for in the Dublin Regulation – that the Greek authorities would honour their obligations, without any individual guarantee concerning the applicant. The applicant saw this as a systematic practice of the Belgian authorities, who had always refused and continued to refuse to apply the sovereignty clause in the Dublin Regulation and not transfer people to Greece. 2. The Belgian Government 326. The Belgian Government submitted that in application of the Dublin Regulation, Belgium was not responsible for examining the