A Member State, in this case Ireland, cannot invoke an unforeseeable influx of applicants for international protection to avoid its obligation to cover the basic needs of asylum seekers, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on Friday 1 August, in judgment C-97/24.
A breach of this obligation may render the Member State concerned liable, the court added.
The court ruled on the case of two asylum seekers, from Afghanistan and India respectively, who were forced to live for several weeks in precarious conditions in Ireland after that Member State refused to provide them with the minimum reception conditions required by EU law. They applied for asylum in February and March 2023.
“The Irish authorities issued each of them with a single voucher for €25. By contrast, those authorities considered that they were not in a position to allocate housing to S.A. and R.J., because the reception centres for asylum seekers were full, notwithstanding the availability of individual temporary housing in Ireland”.
In the absence of such accommodation, the two claimants were not eligible for the daily subsistence allowance provided for under Irish law. They therefore slept on the streets or occasionally in precarious accommodation. They also reported a lack of food.
When the case was referred to them, the Irish authorities admitted that there had been a breach of EU law, but claimed that there had been a case of force majeure due to the temporary exhaustion of accommodation capacity as a result of a massive influx of third-country nationals following the invasion of Ukraine.
In its judgment, the Court points out that, under the Reception Conditions Directive, Member States are obliged to guarantee applicants for international protection material reception conditions that “ensure an adequate standard of living, whether through housing, financial aid, vouchers, or a combination of the three”.
These conditions must cover appropriate accommodation and safeguard the physical and mental health of the people concerned. Thus, a country that fails to provide these material conditions to an applicant who lacks sufficient means, even temporarily, is “manifestly and gravely exceeding its discretion with regard to the application of the directive”.
While EU law “establishes a strictly delineated derogation system enabling the modalities for reception to be adjusted in the event of temporary exhaustion of the housing capacity normally available for applicants for international protection, the application of that system requires that the situation be exceptional, duly justified, and limited in time”. This system applies in particular when a massive and unforeseeable influx of third-country nationals temporarily saturates reception capacity.
But even in this case, the Directive stipulates that Member States must in any event cover the basic needs of the people concerned.
Moreover, there is no evidence to suggest “that Ireland was objectively prevented from fulfilling its obligations – either by providing applicants with housing outside the system normally provided for accommodating them, as the case may be by taking advantage of the derogation system provided for by the directive, or by granting them financial allowances or vouchers”.
Link to the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/i32 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)