Malta offers migrants deemed inadmissible for asylum just three days to appeal the decision, the shortest period of any country in Europe, according to a new report.
The report, published yesterday by the Asylum Information Database (AIDA), found that the majority of European countries offer applicants between seven and 15 days to appeal their decisions, while Estonia has the most generous time limit, at 60 days.
Under the Asylum Procedures Directive, member states must provide applicants with the possibility to challenge admissibility decisions within “reasonable time limits”.
However, according to the report – Admissibility, responsibility and safety in European asylum procedures – most European countries have laid down more restrictive appeal rights regarding inadmissibility decisions compared to those applicable in decisions on the merits of asylum applications. “Providing for truncated time limits for challenging an inadmissibility decision is not prohibited by the directive,” the report states, “so long as they do ‘not render such exercise [of the right to an effective remedy] impossible or excessively difficult’.
“In the context of accelerated procedures, whose aim is to enable member states to quickly reject likely unfounded applications, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has found a time limit of 15 days to be reasonable and proportionate in relation to the rights and interests involved.”
Introducing the report, AIDA coordinator Minos Mouzourakis said the latest reform of the Common European Asylum System had brought the concepts of admissibility, responsibility and safety to the forefront of European asylum procedures by introducing an obligation on member states to deem applications inadmissible on the basis of first country of asylum and safe-third-country grounds.
“Yet such a move seems ill-fitted in the absence of evidence-based knowledge on the use and interpretation of these concepts throughout the continent,” Mr Mouzourakis said.
The European Council on Refugees and Exile (ECRE), drawing on the report, called on countries to publish detailed statistics on key elements of their asylum procedures, such as inadmissibility decisions and the application of the Dublin Regulation, and to promote evidence-based debates on the functioning of and challenges facing their asylum systems.
ECRE also said that European states should refrain from declaring asylum applications inadmissible for the sole reason that an asylum seeker has transited through a country considered safe and step up their efforts to honour the commitments set out in the Relocation Decisions.