Greece - Council of State, 22 March 2011, Application No. 886/2011

The Council of State ruled that the application in question, with its content as set out above, should be dismissed in its entirety. This was because the Applicant's statement to the police authorities at the first stage of the Administration's process of examining the application to be recognised as a refugee (i.e. that he left his country to seek employment) did not establish a reason for him to be covered by the International Convention; nor did the Applicant submit any specific claims of that type in his appeal. Even before the Asylum Advisory Committee, the Applicant – who had stated in his initial examination that he was a Muslim – reported, totally vaguely, that he was at risk of suffering persecution in his homeland because of the change in his religious beliefs, yet he did not present any evidence to support his claims that he had adopted Christianity nor did he plead that he was unable to present any (even unofficial) relevant evidence. Under these circumstances, since the Applicant had not put forward any claims which were substantive, in the sense set out above, to establish that there was a risk of persecution in his country, the asylum application was lawfully rejected and the contested decision which held the Applicant's claims to be contradictory and unsubstantiated did not require any more specific justification. The Council of State also stressed there was no need for the minutes of the Asylum Advisory Committee's session to give a detailed report of the questions posed by members of the Committee, or of the Applicant's responses, or even his credibility assessment, especially given that the Advisory Committee had no obligation under the provisions of domestic and international law to highlight the Applicant's contradictions which were, in this case, obvious. Pleas to the contrary were, therefore, rejected.

The Council of State also rejected the claim that the contested act was issued in contravention of the UN “Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status” as being unfounded, since it (the handbook) is not binding in nature. Finally, the Court ruled that the Applicant cannot be subject to the provisions of paragraph 4 of Article 25 of Law 1975/1991 (Article 2 of Law 2452/1996) which enable a competent authority to approve temporary residence for a foreigner whose application for recognition as a refugee has been rejected, firstly because there is no evidence or allegation that the Applicant had submitted such a request, and secondly because his claims before the Administration to gain international protection were rejected as contradictory and unsubstantiated. It was also ruled that the Authority was not obliged to specifically examine the possibility of allowing him to remain on humanitarian grounds, and the relevant plea was dismissed.