The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by an anonymised Pakistani national who argued that the Dublin III Regulation unlawfully prevented him from choosing Ireland as the country to examine his asylum claim.
The appeal concerned a limited decision at the leave stage of judicial review proceedings. The High Court had allowed the applicant to challenge other matters but refused leave on two grounds: a claim that the Dublin III Regulation was invalid, and a claim that an applicant for international protection was entitled to choose the country where they applied. The Court of Appeal upheld that refusal. It did not determine the underlying judicial review challenge to the International Protection Appeals Tribunal’s decision.
The judgment says the applicant applied for asylum in Ireland in April 2015. He had lived in the United Kingdom from April 2011 to September 2013, said an incident in Pakistan in October 2013 formed the basis of his asylum claim, then returned to the UK in November 2013 before travelling to Ireland in April 2015. He had not sought asylum in the UK. After UK authorities’ records showed his fingerprints, the UK agreed to take responsibility for examining his claim under the Dublin III system. The Refugee Applications Commissioner decided in March 2016 that the UK was responsible; the International Protection Appeals Tribunal rejected his appeal against that decision in April 2017.
Writing for the court, Mr Justice Gerard Hogan said Article 31 of the Refugee Convention affords some choice to people travelling towards a destination, including protection where they briefly transit another country. But the article did not give the applicant an open-ended choice after an extended stay in another safe country, he said. The court distinguished short stopovers and transit from the applicant’s reported period of about 18 months in the UK after the alleged incident.
The court also rejected the argument that the Refugee Convention invalidated the Dublin III Regulation. It said the Convention does not have supreme status in EU law, while EU treaties expressly provide for rules allocating responsibility among member states for asylum applications. The court noted that it could not itself declare an EU regulation invalid; a reference to the Court of Justice would arise only if a serious validity issue had been raised. It concluded that the argument did not meet even the arguability threshold for leave and dismissed the appeal on the two refused grounds.