EU bans transfer of asylum-seekers to where they risk 'inhuman treatment'

A TOP court has barred EU states from transferring asylum seekers to other nations where they could face "inhuman treatment."

THE European Union's top court has barred EU states from transferring asylum seekers to other nations in the bloc where they could face "inhuman treatment."

The court sided with Afghan, Algerian and Iranian asylum seekers who challenged attempts by courts in Britain and Ireland to send them back to their EU entry point of Greece, notorious for the squalid conditions of its immigration system.

"An asylum-seeker may not be transferred to a member state where he (or she) risks being subjected to inhuman treatment," the Luxembourg-based EU Court of Justice ruled.

Under an agreement called Dublin II, EU countries are allowed to deport an asylum-seeker back to the country in which the applicant first set foot.

Greece, overhwelmed by an influx of migrants crossing its porous border with Turkey, has struggled to process a mountain of asylum requests.

The United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, said in 2010 that migrants often endured "inhuman" conditions in filthy, overcrowded detention facilities in Greece.

The European Court of Human Rights ordered Belgium earlier this year to pay damages to an Afghan migrant who had been sent back to Greece.

In the case reviewed by the EU judges, an Afghan national who arrived in Greece in 2008 and later made his way to Britain resisted an attempt to send him back to Greece, arguing that his fundamental rights could be violated there.

Five other migrants from Afghanistan, Iran and Algeria claimed asylum in Ireland after leaving Greece.

The top court ruled that EU law precludes a state from presuming that another EU nation observes fundamental rights conferred on asylum seekers.

EU states and courts "have a number of sufficient instruments at their disposal enabling them to assess compliance with fundamental rights" in other nations, the judges wrote.

The European Commission's home affairs chief, Cecilia Malmstroem, seized on the ruling to press EU governments to show "stronger solidarity" in dealing with asylum seekers and finally agree to a common asylum system by 2012.

The ruling "once again proves that the EU needs a solid and efficient Common European Asylum System to support member states and guarantee a fair and effective system of providing international protection to people in need," she said.

"The EU needs common high standards and stronger cooperation to ensure that asylum seekers are treated equally wherever they apply, and that people in need of protection have the right to an individual assessment of their case, in an open and fair system."