Strasbourg/Berlin – Expulsions from Germany under the Greek-German Seehofer Deal violate the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – this message is at the core of a Third Party Intervention submitted on Friday by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), ProAsyl and Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The NGOs’ intervention in HT v. Germany and Greece highlights that Germany cannot simply return refugees to Greece without a court’s examination of the risks involved.
The Syrian citizen HT was arrested in September 2018 in Germany after entering the country via Austria. As he had already applied for asylum in Greece, he was returned on the same day to Athens under the Seehofer Deal. This administrative agreement, concluded in 2018 between the German Ministry of the Interior and the Greek Ministry of Migration, sets out that people who have already applied for asylum in Greece and arrive in Germany via the German-Austrian border should be refused entry and returned to Greece within 48 hours. Back in Greece, HT was detained pending his deportation back to Turkey, even after mental health issues were detected.
Consequently, HT filed a complaint with the ECtHR on 1 March 2019. He alleges that his expulsion by Germany, as well as his treatment and detention when he was back in Greece, violated his rights under the ECHR, including the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment (Article 3) and the right to an effective remedy (Article 13).
“The Seehofer Deal aims to circumvent the legal safeguards laid out in the ECHR and Dublin III Regulation. Germany cannot simply ignore European law,” said Hanaa Hakiki, legal advisor at ECCHR. “The German policy fits a broader refusal to grant refugees access to protection even after they are within EU borders.”
In their submissions, ECCHR, Pro Asyl and RSA emphasize that Germany must grant refugees and migrants access to a procedure that assesses the various risks in destination countries, in this case, Greece. These include inhuman prison conditions, general deficiencies in the asylum system, and the risk of a chain refoulement to Turkey under the EU-Turkey Agreement.
