Common European Asylum System in a Changing World

has agreed to take charge of the applicant, has the effect that that regulation can no longer be applicable. In such a case, it is for the Member State within the territory of which the application was lodged to take the decisions required as a result of that withdrawal and, in particular, to discontinue the examination of the application, with a record of the information relating to this being placed in the applicant’s file. N.S. and M.E. – Joined Cases C-411/10, C-493/10 The case concerned the concept of safe country and respect for fundamental rights of asylum seekers. The CJEU held that EU law prevents the application of a conclusive presumption that Member States observe all fundamental rights of the Union. Article 4 of the EU Charter must be interpreted as meaning that Member States may not transfer an asylum seeker to the Member State responsible within the meaning of DR where they cannot be unaware that systematic deficiencies in the asylum procedure and the reception conditions in that Member State amount to substantial grounds for believing that the asylum seeker would face a real risk of being subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. Puid, C-4/11 The case concerns a “Dublin transfer.” Mr. Puid was an Iranian national. His asylum application in Germany was declared inadmissible on the ground that he had transited via Greece, which was therefore the country responsible for his application. The CJEU reiterated the finding in N.S. and Others (see above) It is for the referring Court to examine whether such systemic deficiencies existed on the date on which the decision to transfer Mr. Puid to Greece was enforced. Halaf, C-528/11 An Iraqi national applied for asylum in Bulgaria, but he had previously lodged an asylum application in Greece. The Court held that the exercise of the sovereignty clause in Article 3(2) of the DR is not subjected to any particular condition. Therefore, whether the Member State responsible for an asylum application under the DR has or has not responded to a request to take back the asylum seeker does not have any bearing on the possibility to use it. MA and others, C-648/11 The case concerns three unaccompaniedminors who applied for asylum in the United Kingdom after having previously lodged asylum applications in the Netherlands and Italy. The British authorities decided first to send them back to those countries in application of the Dublin Regulation, but later they ruled that the UK would take responsibility for their applications under the sovereignty clause. As the minors did not withdraw the appeals they had lodged against the initial return decision, the Court of Appeal (England and Wales) referred to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling: The CJEU considered the objective of Article e 6(2), which focuses particularly on unaccompanied minors as a particularly vulnerable category, and the objective of the DR, which is to guarantee effective access to an assessment of the applicant’s refugee status. In light of this, the CJEU concludes that unaccompanied minors should not, as a rule, be transferred to another Member State in order to avoid prolongation of the procedure. Dublin III (recast) Regulation (EU) N° 604/2013 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection

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