M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT 13 68. Recital 1 of the Dublin Regulation states that it is part of a common policy on asylum aimed at progressively establishing an area of freedom, security and justice open to those who, forced by circumstances, legitimately seek protection in the Community. 69. Recital 2 affirms that the Dublin Regulation is based on the presumption that the member States respect the principle of nonrefoulement enshrined in the Geneva Convention and are considered as safe countries. 70. Under the Dublin Regulation, the member States must determine, based on a hierarchy of objective criteria (Articles 5-14), which member State bears responsibility for examining an asylum application lodged on their territory. The aim is to avoid multiple applications and to guarantee that each asylum-seeker’s case is dealt with by a single member State. 71. Where it is established that an asylum-seeker has irregularly crossed the border into a member State having come from a third country, the member State thus entered is responsible for examining the application for asylum (Article 10 § 1). This responsibility ceases twelve months after the date on which the irregular border-crossing took place. 72. Where the criteria in the Regulation indicate that another member State is responsible, that State is requested to take charge of the asylumseeker and examine the application for asylum. The requested State must answer the request within two months from the date of receipt of the request. Failure to reply within two months is understood as constituting an acceptance of the request to take charge of the asylum-seeker (Article 17 and Article 18 §§ 1 and 7). 73. Where the requested member State accepts that it should take charge of an asylum-seeker, the member State in which the application for asylum was lodged must notify the asylum-seeker of the decision to transfer him or her, stating the reasons. The transfer must be carried out at the latest within six months following acceptance of the request to take charge. Where the transfer does not take place within that time-limit, responsibility for processing the application lies with the member State in which the application for asylum was lodged (Article 19). 74. By way of derogation from the general rule, each member State may examine an application for asylum lodged with it by a third-country national, even if such examination is not its responsibility under the criteria laid down in the Dublin Regulation (Article 3 § 2). This is called the “sovereignty” clause. In such cases, the State concerned becomes the member State responsible and assumes the obligations associated with that responsibility. 75. Furthermore, any member State, even where it is not responsible under the criteria set out in the Dublin Regulation, may bring together family members, as well as other dependant relatives, on humanitarian grounds based in particular on family or cultural considerations (Article 15