Ireland entitled to ask Sweden to take back man who applied for asylum there, court rules

Ireland was entitled to ask Sweden to take back an Iranian man who applied for asylum there after seeking protection in Belgium, the Court of Appeal has found.

Writing on behalf of the three-judge court, Ms Justice Úna Ní Raifeartaigh said the conditions of an EU Regulation, commonly referred to as the Dublin Regulation, were satisfied, as Sweden had previously examined his application.

The Dublin Regulation, which applies to EU States, Iceland, Switzerland, Norway and Liechtenstein, provides that an asylum application should usually be dealt with in the country the applicant first seeks protection. It also sets out several exceptions to this presumption.

The man in this case applied for international protection in Ireland in August 2020. A search on an EU database indicated he previously sought international protection first in Belgium, then Sweden, both in 2015, and then the United Kingdom in July 2020.

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The judge said he told Irish officials he was refused international protection in Sweden “because they did not believe my words”.

Irish authorities asked Sweden and the UK to “take back” the man pursuant to the Dublin Regulation. No request was made to Belguim.

The request was rejected by the UK and accepted by Sweden, under an article of the Regulation that referenced a “rejected” asylum application.

The man appealed the take-back decision, which the International Protection Appeals Tribunal dismissed.

The man asserted that the regulation had been misapplied and should have led to Belgium being requested to take him back as it was the first Member State in which he applied for protection. However, as no take-back request was made to Belgium within the time limit set out in the regulation, Ireland must take charge of his protection claim, he argued.

He alleged there was no evidence that Sweden positively accepted responsibility under the regulation.

The man appealed to the High Court and the Court of Appeal which both rejected his claims.

In her ruling this week, Ms Justice Ní Raifeartaigh pointed to a potential irony of the man, who told Irish authorities he never sought protection in Belgium, now contending Belgium is the only Member State to which a take-back request should have been made.

The International Protection Office’s discovery of his Belgium application came from its search of the EU database and not from the man’s account, she said.

The judge said there is a “general principle of mutual trust” between Member States, and Ireland was entitled to assume that the other states correctly applied the Dublin Regulation prior to Sweden’s examination.

She also did not accept the man’s argument that Belgium was the priority state and said Sweden was not excluded from satisfying the condition.

With the support of colleagues Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly and Mr Justice Seamus Noonan, she dismissed the appeal. Her provisional view is the respondent appeals tribunal and Minister for Justice should be awarded their legal costs.

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