Brussels, 13/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - In April and May last, the General Court of the EU received three cases requesting the annulment of the agreement (or declaration) between the EU and Turkey negotiated on 18 March. The Court announced this news on Monday 13 June and in so doing, confirmed a report made by the Spanish media outlet, Clarin.
In the two requests submitted on 22 April and a third on 19 May, two refugees of Pakistani and Afghani origin contested the terms of this agreement on the grounds that any person arriving in Greece after the 20 March be sent back to Turkey, including potential asylum seekers. In exchange, the Europeans made a commitment to resettling refugees sheltered in Syria. 506 people have so far been resettled in the EU.
These three requests for annulment involve an act made by the European Council and is a quite rare procedure and according to one European source, it is therefore at risk of being inadmissible. This EU/Turkey agreement or declaration is not binding in any way and the substance of it is not in the shape of a legally binding international agreement either, as sought by the respective European and Turkish leaders.
The question posed is therefore whether it is possible to question the validity of a European Council act and on what Community legal basis this would take. The Court will give its decision on this point.
The three asylum seekers concerned are, according to Spanish media, in a refugee camp in Lesbos and another near Athens. They have expressed fears of being deported to Turkey and ultimately expelled again to their countries of origin. According to Clarin, the plaintiffs questioned the legality of 18 March mechanism on the basis of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees.
The Greek legal system has already made rulings in recent cases regarding whether Turkey was a safe country for certain asylum seekers. On the other hand, it has also reached decisions in other cases where it ruled that Turkey was indeed a safe country. Ultimately, there is no European framework defining Turkey as a safe third country and this task is up to each member state to decide.
The agreement or declaration of 18 March is in any case based on the observation that Turkey is a safe third country and that Ministers of the Interior again demonstrated their confidence in this assertion on Friday 10 June in Luxembourg, during a new progress assessment on migratory flows into the EU. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)