M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT 37 D. The asylum procedure 1. Access to the asylum procedure 173. The reports mentioned in paragraph 160 above describe the numerous obstacles that bar access to the asylum procedure or make it very difficult in practice for both first-time arrivals and persons transferred under the Dublin Regulation who pass through Athens International Airport. 174. The first-hand accounts collected by international organisations and non-governmental organisations and the resulting conclusions may be summarised as follows. 175. Very few applications for asylum are lodged directly with the security services at Athens International Airport because of the lack of staff but also, in certain cases, because of the lack of information that the services even exist. 176. When they arrive at the airport, asylum-seekers are systematically placed directly in detention before their situation has been clarified. 177. When they are released, those who have come to Greece for the first time are sometimes issued with an order to leave the country, printed in Greek, without having first been informed of the possibility of applying for asylum or contacting a lawyer for that purpose. It has even been known to happen that persons returned under the Dublin Regulation who had applied for asylum when they first arrived in Greece were issued with an order to leave the country on the ground that, in their absence, all the time-limits for lodging an appeal had expired. 178. At Athens International Airport several organisations have reported that the information brochure on the asylum procedure is not always given to persons returned under the Dublin Regulation. Nor are they given any other information about the procedures and deadlines or the possibility of contacting a lawyer or a non-governmental organisation to seek legal advice. 179. On the contrary, the police use “tricks” to discourage them from following the procedure. For example, according to several witnesses the police led them to believe that declaring an address was an absolute condition for the procedure to go ahead. 180. The three-day time-limit asylum-seekers are given to report to police headquarters is in fact far too short in practice. The offices concerned are practically inaccessible because of the number of people waiting and because asylum applications can be lodged only on one day in the week. In addition, the selection criteria at the entrance to the offices are arbitrary and there is no standard arrangement for giving priority to those wishing to enter the building to apply for asylum. There are occasions when thousands of people turn up on the appointed day and only 300 to 350 applications are registered for that week. At the present time about 20 applications are being