The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) deemed on 27 May 2021 the complaint made against Finland to be manifestly unfounded and decided to not investigate it.
The case concerned a family that authorities had, under the Dublin III regulation, decided to return to Italy. The appellants had appealed for international protection in Finland in 2018. The Finnish Immigration Service did not investigate the appellants’ asylum application as they deemed Italy to be responsible for processing their asylum application. The family were not granted residence permits in Finland. An Administrative Court rejected the appellants’ complaint. The Supreme Administrative Court did not grant leave to appeal.
In their complaint submitted to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the appellants stated that Italy’s decision to turn them away infringed Article 3 (prohibition of torture) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), because, according to the appellants, in Italy the family’s children would not be provided with appropriate reception conditions or necessary healthcare. According to the appellants, there was also a serious risk of the family being turned back from Italy to their native country of Libya. Concerning the matter, the ECtHR issued an intermediate order, according to which turning the appellants away from Italy should be suspended for the time being.
In its decision, the ECtHR deemed the complaint to be manifestly unfounded and did not investigate it. The ECtHR considered the changes made to the Italian reception system in 2020 in its decision. The ECtHR decided that it was convinced that the Finnish authorities would appropriately inform the Italian authorities of the appellants’ transfer, so that the Italian authorities could take into account the ages of the family’s children and ensure that the family stayed together. According to the ECtHR, the appellants had not shown that the Italian authorities’ decision to turn them away would cause a sufficiently real and immediate risk of hardship serious enough to be covered in the Article 3 of the ECHR.
The decision is available on the ECtHR’s websiteLink to another website..
Further information: Finland’s state agent for the European Court of Human Rights, Director Krista Oinonen, Unit for Human Rights Courts and Conventions, tel. +358 (0)295 351 172.
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs’ e-mail addresses are in the form firstname.lastname@formin.fi
