A new version of the Rules of the Court, agreed earlier in the year by the Plenary Court, entered into force on 1 May. It can be consulted on the Court's website.
On 27 November the LIBE Committee of the European Parliament approved the draft text of the EUROSUR regulation. Negotiations with the European Council are now bound to start with a view to making the system operational as of 1 October 2013. EUROSUR will be a new border surveillance system designed to improve the monitoring, detection, identification, tracking, prevention and interception of illegal border crossings and it will serve as an information exchange system with the EU Member States and FRONTEX.
The applicant is a Brazilian national who had lived in French Guiana since his childhood. In January 2007 he was stopped by the police and, as he was unable to prove that his presence on French soil was legal, an administrative removal order and an administrative detention order were issued against him. He applied for judicial review of the removal and for the stay of the removal order the next day. However, only 50 minutes after lodging his application, Mr. de Souza was removed to Brazil.
The Council of the European Union published on 29/05/2012 its Report on the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). The Report provides updates on the state of play of various aspects of the CEAS amongst which: the state of play of the Asylum Procedures Directive recast proposal and the Commission's intention on amending the EURODAC Regulation.
The Separated Children in Europe Programme (SCEP) published recently its Position Paper on Age Assessment in the Context of Separated Children in Europe.The Paper represents the position of the SCEP on age assessment in the context of separated children in Europe. In particular, it aims to provide concrete recommendations to States and other relevant stakeholders on how to ensure full respect of the rights that separated children are entitled to, when doubts concerning their age may arise.
The applicant is an Egyptian national and an active member of the Coptic Christian community in his country who currently lives in France. He alleged that he had been victim of harassment and violent attacks in Egypt. His complaints against such attacks had not been followed up by the Egyptian authorities. In addition, he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in absentia for proselytism. He fled Egypt in the course of the proceedings and went to France. In 2010 he was arrested in Germany and handed over to the French authorities.
EASO has released its second Annual Report on the Situation of Asylum in the EU in 2012. The report includes an overview of the number of applicants for international protection in the EU, as well as recognition rates and major developments at both the national and EU level. A total of 335,365 asylum applications were filed in the EU, and the overall EU protection rate was 28%.
The main proceedings concern an Iranian national, Mr. Puid, who traveled from Teheran to Athens in October 2007 and after four days there continued to Frankfurt, where he requested asylum at the airport. The German Asylum Office determined that his application was inadmissible because, according to the Dublin Regulation, Greece was responsible for its processing. The applicant brought a court action against this decision seeking its annulment and asking the competent court to order Germany to process his application. He was shortly afterwards returned to Greece.
It observed that the original purpose of Eurodac, as set out in the Eurodac Regulation, is to facilitate the operation of the Dublin II Regulation with the aim of determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application. Based on this, UNHCR considered that Eurodac in principle should be used for its original, limited purpose, and not for objectives extending far beyond that. However, should this proposal be adopted, UNHCR recommended that several safeguards are put in place, including in particular:
