#CJUE: #Asylum #procedures: the obligation to provide the common information leaflet and to conduct a personal interview concerns all Member StatesJustice News247

Asylum procedures: the obligation to provide the common information
leaflet and to conduct a personal interview concerns all Member States

Judgment of the Court of Justice in Joined Cases C-228/21, C-254/21, C-297/21, C-315/21 and C-328/21|
Ministero dell’Interno (Common leaflet – Indirect refoulement)
Asylum procedures: the obligation to provide the common information
leaflet and to conduct a personal interview concerns all Member States;
the risk of indirect refoulement is not, as a rule, examined by the second
Member State seised.
Information concerning the asylum procedure must be provided to the applicant even when a second asylum
application is made. Hearing an action challenging the transfer to the Member State of the first application,
the courts of the second Member State cannot, in principle, examine the risk of refoulement to the applicant’s
country of origin.
Several persons originally from, inter alia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan applied for asylum in Italy. They had
previously made similar applications in other Member States (Slovenia, Sweden, Germany and Finland). Since those
other Member States agreed, in accordance with the Dublin III Regulation 1
, to take back those applicants, Italy
adopted transfer decisions in respect of those applicants. As a rule, it is for the first Member State seised to examine
whether international protection is to be granted.
The applicants objected to the transfer. The Italian courts hearing those disputes ask whether an applicant who
makes a second asylum application must, as for the first application, be given the ‘common leaflet’ (that is to say,
that it is uniform throughout the European Union), which contains information about the procedure and the rights
and obligations of the applicant and, in addition, be entitled to a personal interview. Moreover, they ask whether it is
possible to take into account, in the context of the examination of the transfer decision, the risk of refoulement of
the applicant to his or her country of origin. Those courts therefore sought clarification from the Court of Justice 2
.
The Court finds that the provision of the common leaflet and the conduct of a personal interview are
required both upon a first asylum application and upon a subsequent application. The applicant is thus put in
a position to be able to inform the authorities of the second Member State about anything that might prevent his or
her transfer and might justify the latter Member State becoming the one responsible for examining his or her
asylum application. A failure to comply with those obligations may, under certain conditions, justify the annulment
of the transfer decision.
By contrast, the courts of the second Member State cannot examine whether the applicant, after the
transfer to the first Member State, risks being returned to his or her country of origin. It cannot be
otherwise unless the courts find that there are systemic flaws in the asylum procedure and in the reception
conditions for applicants for international protection in the first Member State. Differences of opinion
between the Member State as regards the interpretation of the conditions for international protection do not
establish the existence of systemic deficiencies. Each Member State must, save in exceptional circumstances,
consider all the other Member States to be complying with EU law and particularly with the fundamental right