Articles |
The New ‘Dubliners’: Implementation of European Council Regulation 343/2003 (Dublin-II) by the Greek Authorities
Member of the Legal Assistance Unit in the Greek Council for Refugees
University of the Aegean; Athens Bar Representative in the Asylum Appeals Board ipapag{at}soc.aegean.gr
The paper analyses a recent practice applied by the Greek asylum authorities in the case of many asylum applicants who are returned to Greece by another European Union Member State by virtue of the ‘Dublin-II’ Regulation. This practice consists in interrupting the examination of their asylum claim on the grounds that the applicants have arbitrarily abandoned their place of residence. Greek legislation provides for this action in similar cases but was not used, up till recently, on cases of ‘Dublin’ returnees. The paper examines the reasons that led the Greek authorities to adopt this policy and its foundation in Greek asylum law and procedures, and challenges the practice legally and politically. It argues that, in adopting such a stance, Greece seems not only to go against the main objective of the Dublin-II Regulation (that an asylum application is examined once, and once only in the EU) but to contradict and undermine European Union policies on asylum, breaking the principle of good faith in its relations with its EU partners. In addition, it considers the possibility of similar problems being repeated in other national legal orders.
Ms received October 2004; revised MS received April 2005
1. During the last census of 2001, the Greek National Statistical Service (ESYE) proceeded for the first time to a conscientious and significant effort to interview and count immigrants. The number of third country nationals surveyed amounted to 750,000. Estimates raise their total number in Greece to almost one million (a tenth of the total population).
2. Greece ratified the Convention by Law 1996/13-16.12.1991 (OJ A' 196).
3. Data for asylum applications in 2003 only cover the months of January to November since the figures for the month of December have never been officially released by the MPO authorities.
4. The issue of statistics, central to this article, is unfortunately one of the thorniest as well. The official figures provided by the Ministry for Public Order concerning asylum seekers refer to data which it is obliged to release, by virtue of the PD (i.e. number of applications, rejections and interruptions). Other data are often considered confidential: these include figures concerning Dublin transfers and are not released to individuals. As a result it is not possible to have updated official data on cases of Dublin transfers and recourse is made throughout the article either to figures compiled by UNHCR or the Greek Council for Refugees, or to earlier data provided by the EU institutions.
5. Article 4, Commission Regulation (EC) 1560/2003 from 2 September 2003 ‘laying down detailed rules for the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national’, OJ L 222, from 5.9.2003, pp. 3–23. These cases are expressly mentioned by the Regulation and concern situations when the asylum applicant leaves the territory of the Member State for at least three months following the first asylum application lodged in the State which receives the request to take back or has, in the meantime, received a residence permit in another Member State.
6. However, several asylum law practitioners maintain that even in such cases the asylum application which has not been examined on its merits should be ‘revived’.
7. The Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) is an NGO implementing partner of UNHCR and works for the social and legal assistance of refugees and asylum seekers in Greece. Its Legal Assistance Unit is the largest among such organizations in Greece.