CJEU Decides on Afghan/Iranian Asylum Seekers’ Case [1]
On May 14, 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment [3] in Joined Cases C-924/19 PPU and C-925/19 PPU FMS and Others [currently in French and Hungarian only]. A press release [4] from the Court explains that the case concerns “Afghan . . . and Iranian nationals . . . who arrived in Hungary via Serbia, [and] lodged applications for asylum.” Hungarian courts “dismissed [their asylum applications] as inadmissible” and ordered that they “return to Serbia”; when they were refused re-entry in Serbia, “Hungarian authorities . . . amended the country of destination…replacing it with the respective country of origin of the persons concerned.” In response to the rejection of their “objections against the amending decisions,” “the applicants brought an action before a Hungarian court for annulment of the [rejections] . . . and to have the asylum authority ordered to conduct a new asylum procedure. They also brought actions for failure to act relating to their detention.” The Court decided three things: First, that the applicants’ “situation” was in fact “a detention measure,” and that as a result, Hungary had certain obligations to the applicants; second, that the “national court” does “ha[ve] jurisdiction to hear the action” because applicants are entitled to “effective remedy” and “effective judicial protection”; and third, that the grounds on which Hungary declared the applicants’ application inadmissible were not consistent with the Procedures Directive. The Court also ruled that the applicants have recourse to submit a second application for consideration in which the latter of these three decisions can be used as new evidence. This case should be contrasted with a similar case decided recently by the European Court of Human Rights and covered on ILIB [5].