The High Court has refused an applicant leave to seek a declaration that the EU’s Dublin III regulation is invalid, in a judgment confined to that part of his judicial review application.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as M.A.H., argued that the regulation unlawfully removed a right to choose the country in which to seek asylum under the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. He relied on Article 31.2 of the Convention, which requires states to allow refugees a reasonable period and necessary facilities to obtain admission to another country.
The judgment records that the applicant sought asylum in the UK in 2009 and in Northern Ireland in 2014, and was refused on both occasions. He applied for asylum in Ireland on 29 August 2016. On 17 November that year, the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner notified him that the UK was responsible for examining the claim under Dublin III.
After an appeal and an oral hearing, the International Protection Appeals Tribunal confirmed on 11 May 2017 that the application should be examined in the UK. The applicant challenged the regulation’s validity, arguing that it forced him to apply in a country where he did not wish to do so.
Justice O’Regan said the applicant’s account overstated the element of choice afforded by the Convention. The judgment noted that the applicant had previously applied for asylum in England and Northern Ireland and, according to documents he had provided, had lived in the UK from about December 2006 until 2011 before travelling to Northern Ireland. He arrived in Ireland in August 2016.
The judge said the period in the UK could not be treated as a short-term stopover en route to Ireland, and found nothing in the applicant’s circumstances to suggest that his initial arrival in the UK was merely a journey towards seeking asylum in Ireland. The judgment also noted that no allegation had been made that returning him to the UK would expose him to a threat covered by Article 33 of the Convention.
The court refused leave to apply for certiorari seeking a declaration that Dublin III was invalid. The judgment addresses that request for leave; it does not determine the broader validity of the regulation.