The Court of Appeal has quashed a decision revoking a Romanian man’s refugee status, finding that the Minister for Justice had not carried out the required individual assessment of whether he remained at risk of persecution.
The ruling does not determine whether the man’s refugee status should ultimately be revoked. The court held that the Minister’s decision of 18 May 2021 was flawed because the material before it did not assess current conditions for Roma people in Romania or address whether Roma people continued to face mistreatment by Romanian police. The court ordered the decision quashed.
The man, identified in the judgment as T. F., was granted asylum in Ireland in 2004 after reporting persecution, including physical mistreatment by Romanian police because of his Roma ethnicity. He became an Irish citizen in 2015, but the court said that did not automatically end his refugee status because the relevant statutory provision was not yet in force.
Romanian authorities sought his surrender twice under European Arrest Warrants. The first request, in 2011, sought his return to face criminal charges. A second warrant, issued in 2018, sought his surrender to serve a four-year prison sentence imposed after a trial in absentia. The Minister accepted on both occasions that his refugee status prevented surrender. The High Court refused the second request in 2020.
The Minister began a process to revoke his status in March 2021, citing changes in Romania since its accession to the European Union in 2007. The man’s solicitor objected that the proposal was an abuse of process prompted by the surrender proceedings. The Court of Appeal rejected the claim that the EAW proceedings or the Minister’s decision to begin the revocation process were, by themselves, improper. It found no evidence that the warrants had improperly influenced the decision’s outcome.
The man did not submit substantive representations on the proposed revocation. The court also rejected his argument that correspondence from the Minister’s office had led him reasonably to expect another opportunity to make submissions. It said he had been given an extended deadline and could have made substantive representations while continuing to challenge the process.
However, the 2021 decision relied on a 2004 European Parliament statement and Romania’s 2007 EU accession, without evidence of more recent analysis or information specific to Roma people. Merely noting the man’s ethnicity and the basis of his original asylum grant did not amount to assessing his current risk, the court held. The Minister must consider known individual circumstances even where the person does not make representations.
The court did not accept the man’s delay argument. It also declined to refuse relief because he had a statutory appeal pending in the Circuit Court, noting that the appeal as framed would not bring the substantive issues properly before that court. The judgment does not prevent the Minister from making a further proposal to revoke his status. The Circuit Court appeal, if pursued, has suspensive effect: the revocation decision would not take effect unless affirmed or the appeal withdrawn.