In some cases, you may be sent to another country without your asylum application being reviewed in substance.
Although states have the obligation to let you into the country for processing your asylum application, there are some exceptions – if another EU Member State is responsible for your application or your application is deemed inadmissible.
Dublin procedure
As an area without internal borders, the EU has rules to make sure that one Member State is responsible for one asylum application. For that purpose, Regulation 604/2013, also known as the Dublin Regulation, provides a hierarchy of criteria for identifying the responsible Member State. First preference is given to the states where a family member of the asylum-seeker is present, either as a beneficiary of international protection, or as an asylum-seeker.
important Family is defined very narrowly in the Dublin Regulation – it is limited to your spouse and minor children, or in case the applicant is a minor child, the parents or other adults responsible for the child. This means that the state where your siblings or adult children are present cannot usually be held responsible for your application based on the principle of family unity.
Otherwise, the core principle of the Dublin Regulation is that the responsibility for an asylum application lies with the Member State which played the greatest part in your entry to the EU – the state that issued you with entry documents, or in case of irregular entry, the state through which you first entered the EU.
example If you applied for a tourist visa in an Slovak Embassy, then travelled from Slovakia to Germany and applied for asylum there, the German authorities will send you to Slovakia to process your asylum application based on the Dublin Regulation (unless a close family member of yours is residing in Germany as an asylum-seeker, or as a beneficiary of international protection).
Inadmissible application
The Ministry of Interior can reject your application for granting asylum (within 60 days from the commencement of the procedure) if:
- you received an asylum in other state
- you come from a safe third country
- another state is competent to act in you asylum granting procedure
- you are a national of a member state of the EU
- your application concerns a subsequent application for granting asylum, if it was effectively decided in the asylum granting procedure in the past that the application be rejected as manifestly unfounded;you do not justify your application for granting asylum properly.
The Ministry of Interior also denies granting asylum, if:
- you do not have a well-founded fear of being persecuted in your country of origin for reasons of race, ethnic origin or religion, holding of a particular political opinion or membership of a particular social group or you are not persecuted in your country of origin for exercise of political rights and freedoms;
- you do not meet requirements for granting asylum for the purpose of family reunification;
- there is a well-founded suspicion that you have committed a crime against peace, war crime, crime against humanity or serious non-political crime;
- you do not have well-founded fear of your persecution in another part of your country of origin;you can be reasonably considered a danger to the security of the Slovak Republic.
What human rights violation may there be?
It is possible that you arrived in the EU without entry documents through a country where the asylum system has serious deficiencies, which may put you at risk of violation of your right to life or freedom from torture or inhumane or degrading treatment. These violations may result from undignified living conditions or disregard for the non-refoulement principle (being sent back to the country where you are faced with persecution).
example In the case of M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece, the European Court of Human Rights found that transferring the applicant to Greece from Belgium under the Dublin Regulation would result in a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human rights (prohibition of torture and inhumane treatment), because the applicant would be exposed to detention and inhumane living conditions in Greece, as well as expulsion to Afghanistan without any serious examination of his asylum application.
It is also possible that your asylum application may be considered inadmissible because you arrived through a country which the authorities consider to be a safe third country, even though it is not.
example You escaped your country of origin, travelled through Ukraine , then arrived at a Slovak border crossing point and applied for international protection. The police refuses to accept your application claiming that Ukraine is a safe third country. This is a violation.
How to complain
If you do not agree with the decision to be sent to another country, you have the right to an effective remedy before a court. Read more about how to complain.