Austria: Supreme Administrative Court (VwGH), 26. March 2019, Ro 2018/19/0005

The appellants are Afghan nationals. The first and second appellant are married to each other and are the parents of the minor third to sixth appellant.

After they entered Greece, the first appellant travelled on to Austria, where he filed an application for international protection. His procedure was admitted in Austria. The other appellants lodged asylum applications in Greece. The Greek authorities then submitted a request to the Austrian authorities based on Art. 10 of the Dublin III Regulation to admit the other appellants for the purpose of family reunification. The Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum (BFA) rejected this request on the grounds that the family unit had existed in Greece and that it had been deliberately separated by the onward journey of the first appellant to Austria The Greek authorities requested that the request for admission be reconsidered twice, but each time the BFA rejected it.

The appellants thereupon applied to the BFA for approval of the Greek application for admission or alternatively the issue of a temporary injunction for provisional approval of the Greek application. The appellants relied upon Art. 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU) and on Art. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), as well as on the right to an effective remedy under Article 47 CFREU and the effet utile under Union law.

The BFA dismissed the applications finding that the Dublin III Regulation represents a closed system of legal protection, whereby neither the Dublin III Regulation nor national law provides for a subjective right to review an administrative decision on the rejection of a request for admission by the requested Member State. Since the decisions are essentially in the private interest of the appellants, the Court imposed an administrative fee pursuant to Sec. 78 para. 1 AVG.

The appellants lodged the present appeal against this decision.