European Union law does not allow a Member State to return an unaccompanied minor to his or her country of origin without ensuring that adequate reception facilities are available in that country. In a judgment delivered on Thursday 14 January (case C-441/19), the Court of Justice of the European Union stated that a Member State may not conclude that adequate reception facilities are available solely based on the criterion of age.
This judgment comes after the Dutch government referred a case involving a young man from Guinea for a preliminary ruling. TQ arrived in the Netherlands in June 2017 following the death of his aunt, with whom he was living in Sierra Leone, and applied for a fixed-term residence permit on grounds of asylum. He claimed he had been the victim of human trafficking and sexual exploitation since arriving in the Netherlands.
When his application was refused, TQ brought an appeal before the referring court, claiming inter alia that he did not know where his parents lived, that he would not be able to recognise them upon his return, that he did not know any other family members and that he did not even know whether he has any such family members.
However, under Dutch regulations, the authorities wait until minors over 15 years of age reach the age of 18 before implementing the return decision, treating them as irregular but tolerated (for minors under the age of 15 years of age, an investigation is carried out as to whether there exist adequate reception facilities).
In its judgment, the Court held that distinguishing between minors on the basis of their age, as carried out by the Dutch regulations, is unlawful. The Court also stated that the age criterion “constitutes only one factor among others in order to ascertain whether there are adequate reception facilities in the State of return and to determine whether the best interests of the child must result in a return decision against that minor not being issued”. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)