Bundesverfassungsgericht

You are here:

Termination of proceedings regarding the repatriation of asylum-seekers according to the Dublin II Regulation

Press Release No. 6/2011 of 26 January 2011

Order of 25 January 2011
2 BvR 2015/09

On 28 October 2010, the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court held an oral hearing about a constitutional complaint concerning the denial of a temporary injunction against the deportation order to Greece issued to an asylum-seeker on the basis of Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 of 18 February 2003 (the so-called Dublin II Regulation). The Regulation determines which European Union Member State is responsible for examining an asylum application. The Regulation provides the Member States with the possibility, known as the sovereignty clause, of transferring an asylum application to the national procedure in derogation of the provisions on responsibility. On the instruction of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees now made use of this possibility in the complainant's favour, annulling the decision by which it ordered the complainant's deportation to Greece. Furthermore, in all cases in which a transfer of third-country nationals to Greece is a consideration, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, until 12 January 2012, will invoke the sovereignty clause, will not transfer the persons affected to Greece and will conduct the asylum proceedings. The complainant has declared the proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court settled. By the order issued yesterday, the proceedings have been terminated. The Second Senate did not see a reason for continuing the proceedings in order to clarify questions of national constitutional law which are of a merely abstract nature and not of current interest.

Immediately after the oral hearing, the Senate had proposed to the Federal Ministry of the Interior to examine whether the proceedings could be settled by invoking the sovereignty clause. As the transnational problems arising from the excessive strain on a European Union Member State's asylum system are to be dealt with mainly at European Union level, and with a view to the efforts, which had been convincingly described by the Federal Minister of the Interior in the oral hearing, to redress shortcomings of the Greek asylum system in the near future, the Senate regarded a termination of the proceedings without a ruling as adequate. These considerations still carry weight. Due to the instruction now given by the Federal Ministry of the Interior to generally invoke the sovereignty clause if Greece is responsible according to the Dublin II Regulation, a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court is no longer required.