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M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT
§ 1). This is known as the “humanitarian” clause. In this case, that member
State will, at the request of another member State, examine the application
for asylum of the person concerned. The persons concerned must consent.
76. Another Council Regulation, No. 2725/2000/EC of 11 December
2000, provides for the establishment of the Eurodac system for the
comparison of fingerprints (“the Eurodac Regulation”). It requires the States
to register asylum-seekers’ fingerprints. The data are transmitted to
Eurodac’s central unit, run by the European Commission, which stores them
in its central database and compares them with the data already stored there.
77. On 6 June 2007 the European Commission transmitted a report to
the European Parliament and the Council on the evaluation of the Dublin
system (COM(2007) 299 final). On 3 December 2008 it made public its
proposal for a recasting of the Dublin Regulation (COM(2008) 820 final/2).
The purpose of the reform is to improve the efficiency of the system and
ensure that all the needs of persons seeking international protection are
covered by the procedure for determining responsibility.
78. The proposal aims to set in place a mechanism for suspending
transfers under the Dublin system, so that, on the one hand, member States
whose asylum systems are already under particularly heavy pressure are not
placed under even more pressure by such transfers and, on the other hand,
so that asylum-seekers are not transferred to member States which cannot
offer them a sufficient level of protection, particularly in terms of reception
conditions and access to the asylum procedure (Article 31 of the proposal).
The State concerned must apply to the European Commission for a
decision. The transfers may be suspended for up to six months. The
Commission may extend the suspension for a further six months at its own
initiative or at the request of the State concerned.
79. The proposal, examined under the codecision procedure, was
adopted by the European Parliament at first reading on 7 May 2009 and
submitted to the Commission and the Council.
80. At the Informal Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting in
Brussels on 15 and 16 July 2010, the Belgian Presidency of the Council of
the European Union placed on the agenda an exchange of views on the
means of arriving at a single asylum procedure and a uniform standard of
international protection by 2012. The discussions focused in particular on
what priority the Council should give to negotiations on the recasting of the
Dublin Regulation and on whether the ministers would back the inclusion of
the temporary suspension clause.
81. The Court of Justice of the European Communities (CJEC), which
subsequently became the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)
upon the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, has delivered one
judgment concerning the Dublin Regulation. In the Petrosian case (C-19/08,
judgment of 29 January 2009) the CJEC was asked to clarify the
interpretation of Article 20 §§ 1 and 2 of the Dublin Regulation concerning