Childhood’s End? The Court of Justice upholds unaccompanied child refugees’ right to family reunion

Professor Steve Peers, University of Essex

Turning 18 is a big moment in any young person’s life. Although it rarely entails, by itself, an immediate change in their social and economic links with their parents, it is widely recognised as a significant rite of legal passage, marking as it does the official date of becoming an adult.

But what if the main legal impact of turning 18 is not the enhancement of a young person’s legal rights, but rather their deterioration? That is often the scenario in immigration or asylum law, in particular for those who need protection the most: unaccompanied minors. Since immigration and asylum procedures often take some time, the question then arises what happens if applicants are underage when a process began, but become an adult before it finishes. Do they retain throughout that process the special legal protection accorded to children? At what point exactly does that special legal status end?

That was the issue in yesterday’s judgment in A and S, which was the first time the Court of Justice has ruled on the family reunion rights of child refugees. The judgment concerns the EU’s family reunion Directive, which contains special rules for the family reunion of refugees in general, and unaccompanied minor refugees in particular.  However, it is possible that it has an impact on the status of young people in EU immigration and asylum law more generally.

The basic EU rules on family reunion

The EU’s family reunion Directive sets minimum standards, so states can be more generous if they wish. It mainly concerns reunion of spouses and minor children with a non-EU sponsor; admission of further family members is optional in most cases. It does not apply to the UK, Ireland and Denmark. However, it will apply to family reunion of UK citizens in the EU (besides those living in Ireland and Denmark) after the post-Brexit transition period, when the UK is no longer covered by EU free movement law, unless (a) they are covered by the withdrawal agreement (see discussion here), or (b) the EU (or, if legally possible, individual Member States) and the UK agree special rules on post-Brexit family migration.

The standard rules in the Directive require that: the sponsor has a residence permit valid for at least one year, and has “reasonable prospects” of obtaining permanent residence; the family members must reside outside the territory when the application is made (although Member States can derogate from that rule); “public policy, public security or public health” are grounds for rejection; conditions relating to accommodation, sickness insurance and “stable and regular resources” may be imposed; Member States may require “integration measures”; and there can be a waiting period of two years of lawful stay of the sponsor before family reunion takes place.

There are also exclusions from the scope of the Directive. It does not apply at all to: asylum seekers; persons with temporary protection; persons with subsidiary protection on the basis of national or international law; and family members of EU citizens (whether they have moved within the EU or not). Implicitly it does not apply to irregular migrants, since by definition they do not have a residence permit with the prospect of long-term residence, until and unless Member States decide to regularise their status.   

Member States can set lower standards than the Directive, where it allows for such derogations, although this is subject to detailed conditions. These derogations exist as regards: children over 12, who arrive separately from the rest of the family; minimum ages for the sponsor or spouse; children over 15; and a waiting period of three years.

The Court of Justice has ruled on the Directive several times, as regards: its validity in light of human rights concerns (EP v Council); its application to dual EU/non-EU citizens (O and S) the sufficient resources condition (Chakroun and Khachab); the minimum age of spouses (Noorzia, discussed here); and the integration conditions (K and A, discussed here). Pending cases concern: the application of the Directive by analogy to family reunion with “home State” EU citizens (C and A) and persons with subsidiary protection (K and B and E); the rejection of a separate residence permit due to failure to comply with integration conditions (K); and loss of a residence permit due to fraud which the family member was unaware of (YZ and others).

As well as the special rules for refugee family reunion set out in the original Directive, subsequent EU legislation contains more favourable rules for the family reunion of other groups of non-EU citizens: holders of an EU Blue Card for highly-skilled workers (discussed here); intra-corporate transferees (discussed here); and researchers (discussed here). The proposal to amend the Blue Card law (discussed here) would enhance these rules further. Yesterday’s judgment is the first time the ECJ has interpreted any of these special rules.

Exceptions for refugees

The special rules apply to a refugee who has been “recognised” by a Member State, meaning that their asylum application for refugee status in that State was successful. A “refugee” is defined not by reference to EU law, but to international law – the UN (Geneva) Convention on the Status of Refugees and its protocol – since the Directive was adopted before the EU adopted its own asylum laws. Member States. Member States may limit the special rules to family relationships which predate entry to the Member State.

These rules waive a number of conditions for family reunion: the optional derogation for those over 12; the conditions relating to accommodation, sickness insurance and “stable and regular resources” (although Member States can apply those conditions if the sponsor or family members have “special links” with a non-EU country, or if the application was submitted more than three months after refugee status was granted); and the waiting period. The rules on evidence of family relationships are also relaxed, in the event that documentary evidence is unavailable. Finally, the optional “integration measures” requirement can only be applied after family reunion, whether the family relationship existed before entry or not. 

Conversely, other conditions still apply: the requirement of a residence permit valid for at least one year, with “reasonable prospects” of obtaining permanent residence; residence outside the territory when the application is made; and “public policy, public security or public health”. Satisfying the first of these criteria is made easier by EU law, since the Qualification Directive requires refugees, once their status is recognised, to receive a residence permit valid for at least three years, and refugees can qualify for EU long-term residence status under the relevant Directive.

Most importantly for our case, the refugee rules make the admission of the parents of unaccompanied minor refugees mandatory, rather than optional; and they waive the conditions that otherwise apply to the admission of migrants’ parents (they must be “dependent” on the sponsor and they “do not enjoy proper family support in the country of origin”).

The judgment

The A and S case concerns a young Eritrean woman who arrived in the Netherlands and made an asylum application just before turning 18. Her application was successful after her birthday, and a NGO shortly afterward applied on her behalf for admission of her parents and siblings on the basis of the special rules in the family reunion Directive.  But could she rely on the special rules at all – given that she was over 18 when the application for family reunion was made, and indeed when her refugee status was recognised?

The Dutch government argued that the relevant date when a person must be considered a minor should be determined by national law, while the Commission argued for the date of the application for family reunion, and the Polish government argued for the date of the decision on the family reunion application. The applicants (the young woman’s parents) argued for the date of her initial entry onto the territory. No one argued for another reasonable possibility: the date of the decision on the refugee application (although that would raise the question of what the date would be if that decision was appealed). Ultimately the Court decided that the relevant date was the date of applying for refugee status.

The Court’s starting point was (as it had ruled before) the “right” of family reunion guaranteed by the Directive, which the addition of the intention (in the preamble of the Directive) to ensure “more favourable conditions for refugees for the exercise of” that right, “on account of the reasons which obliged them to flee their country and prevent them from leading a normal family life there”. Those more favourable rules include a mandatory admission of the parents of unaccompanied minors, waiving the normal conditions which would usually apply.

Next, the Court noted that the definition of “unaccompanied minor” in the Directive was not absolutely fixed at entry: parents could arrive after the child’s entry, or desert the child after entry. In that context, it was unclear from the text of the Directive when the requirement of being 18 had to apply. But that did not mean Member States had discretion to decide that issue; the Court applied the normal rule that in the absence of an express reference to the laws of the Member States, a provision of EU law “must normally be given an autonomous and uniform interpretation throughout the European Union, and that interpretation must take into account, inter alia, the context of the provision and the objective pursued by the legislation in question”.

Since other provisions of the Directive refer explicitly to national law, the absence of such a reference in the definition of “unaccompanied minor” had an a contrario effect. The objective of the Directive was to give a right of admission to their parents, in the context of protecting family life with more favourable conditions for refugees. This case had to be distinguished from Noorzia, on the minimum age of spouses for family reunion, which concerned an optional rule that expressly gave Member States discretion to decide on the age.  Ultimately, then, the issue could not be left to each Member State to determine.

Rather, the uniform definition of “unaccompanied minor” had to be determined “by reference to the wording, general scheme and objective of that directive, taking into account the regulatory context in which it is found and the general principles of EU law”.  As noted already, the wording didn’t settle the issue. The general scheme included the exclusion of asylum-seekers from the scope of the Directive, and the application of the special rules only after the refugee had been “recognised as such by the Member States”. In that context, the Court noted that the EU’s Qualification Directive requires refugee status to be granted if an applicant satisfies the relevant conditions, and states that “recognition of refugee status is a declaratory act”, so that a person who meets the conditions for refugee status “has a subjective right to be recognised as having refugee status…even before the formal decision is adopted in that regard”.

So it followed that the date for assessing the applicant’s age could not be when the decision on refugee status was taken.  Such an interpretation would make status as a minor dependent on the functioning of national administrations, and thus undermine the effectiveness of the family reunion rules and the aims of the Directive, along with “the principles of equal treatment and legal certainty”. That’s because two different children of the same age who applied for asylum would be in a different position depending on how quickly their application was processed, an issue which was outside their control – governed rather by Member States’ decisions about organising their administration. In any event, due to “substantial surges” in asylum applications, decision making might be long winded and “time limits laid down in that regard by EU law are often exceeded”, so a “substantial proportion of refugees” who are unaccompanied minors might be denied their family reunion right. (Note that, with respect, the Court is confused here: the rules in the EU’s asylum procedures Directive on time limits to decide on asylum applications don’t apply until July 2018).

Rather than taking up the option in EU law to fast-track such cases, there might be the “opposite effect”, which would frustrate the objectives of EU legislation and the EU Charter rules on rights of the child. Here the Court obliquely recognises the possible cynicism of national interior ministries, which might simply delay deciding on applications until a child turns 18 if that would lead to preventing the admission of parents. Furthermore the Court rules that using the date of the decision on refugee recognition would “undermine legal certainty” for the young applicants as regards their family reunion.

The Court’s preferred interpretation – using the date on which the asylum application was submitted – “enables identical treatment and foreseeability to be guaranteed for all applicants who are in the same situation chronologically”, as the outcome would depend on facts intrinsic to them, not to the efficiency of national administrations.  However, the Court did accept the argument of the Dutch government and the Commission that some time limit should apply. In the judges’ view, a “reasonable time” would “in principle” be three months after the decision on refugee status, matching the optional three-month deadline explicitly set out in the Directive for refugees to make an application for family reunion before the conditions of accommodation, sickness insurance and sufficient resources apply.

Finally, the Court rejected other possible dates to determine the young person’s age: the date of entry into the territory of a Member State had to be rejected because of the link of the family reunion right with refugee status, which could only be granted after an asylum application; and the date of applying for family reunion, or the date of the decision on that application, would infringe the basic logic of the Court’s reasoning.

Comments

The core motivation of the Court’s judgment – to give broad effect to family reunion rights in general, and to the special family reunion rights of child refugees in particular – reflects a rights-based reasoning, rather than the control-based approach taken by many Member States and the EU institutions during the perceived “refugee crisis” of the last few years. Although the Court ties its interpretation of the family reunion Directive closely to the asylum process – even though there was no EU asylum law when the Directive was adopted – it nevertheless views that process with suspicion, as a potential mechanism for frustrating the applicant’s rights. The Court may have an opportunity to develop this line of reasoning further soon, if it is willing to answer questions in the pending cases (referred to above) where the Member State concerned has extended the special rules for refugees in the family reunion Directive to apply also to sponsors with subsidiary protection status (an alternative form of “international protection” which applies where applicants don’t satisfy the criteria for refugee status).

If the Court had fully followed its own logic on the declaratory effect of granting refugee status, then its final conclusion of using the date when the minor applies for asylum is suspect, for the child concerned must have been a refugee either as soon as they entered the territory, or at some later point (likely before they actually applied for asylum) when the situation in their country of nationality or (if stateless) habitual residence changed for the worse. While the Court is right to say that the Directive links the special family reunion rights with refugee status, that link is built in to the Directive anyway because the special family reunion right can never be triggered in the first place unless a successful asylum application is made. In any event, the Court’s judgment means that it is wise for an unaccompanied child who is nearly 18 to apply for asylum as soon as possible after entering the territory, to avoid any risk that they will not be able to invoke the special family reunion rights in the event that their application for refugee status is successful.

What constraints do Member States still retain on family reunion for refugees just turning 18? They can still try to limit access to their territory for the would-be young refugees. However, if those potential refugees make it to the territory, Member States can’t simply ban minors from applying for refugee status in the first place, since the asylum procedures Directive requires that they must be able to apply for asylum one way or another. If refugee status is granted, Member States can use any of the applicable options to restrict family reunion in general or the special refugee rules in particular that they have not already invoked. (Note that some of those options are off the table, since they are subject to a “standstill” rule and so had to be invoked already if they were going to be validly applied).

The Court even gives Member States a new limitation: a possible three month deadline “in principle” for the young refugees to trigger the special rules for their parents to join them. But if the sponsors are subject anyway to the three month deadline to avoid the conditions of accommodation, sickness insurance and sufficient resources, they will need to move quickly in any event. Although refugees have rights to employment in the qualification Directive, it might be hard for a young refugee to find a good enough job in the time available (access to employment for asylum seekers is limited, by the EU’s reception condition directive); and unlike EU free movement law, the family reunion Directive, as confirmed by the case law (see Khachab) requires the sufficient resources to come from the sponsors, not from their family members. In light of the principle of effectiveness, the three month deadline should not apply to those who were wrongly deprived of their family reunion rights before the Court’s judgment (see the recent King judgment on working time holiday pay, by analogy),

Are there broader implications of the judgment for other EU asylum legislation? (There are also special rules on unaccompanied minors in the EU’s returns Directive, concerning irregular migrants). This would be relevant to the qualification Directive, which includes, among other things, an obligation to trace unaccompanied child refugees’ family members. For its part, the asylum procedures Directive grants unaccompanied minors, among other things, exemptions from some procedural limitations; it also sets out rules on the sometimes controversial issue of assessing the age of children in the event of a dispute. The reception conditions Directive also requires some special treatment of unaccompanied minors, including in the context of detention. Finally, the Dublin rules on responsibility for asylum seekers contain a special rule for responsibility for the asylum applications of unaccompanied minors, which the Court of Justice previously interpreted generously.  Like the family reunion Directive, all this legislation has essentially the same definition of “unaccompanied minors” as the family reunion Directive, without addressing the “passage into adulthood” point, so logically ought to be interpreted the same way. (Note that conversely, EU criminal law legislation on child suspects’ rights – discussed here – does explicitly address this issue, setting out rules on this point similar to the Court’s family reunion judgment in its Article 2(3)).

The Court’s judgment might cause political difficulty for Member States, given that the special rules on unaccompanied minors were highly contested when EU refugee legislation was last renegotiated, ending in 2013. (A modest proposal on unaccompanied minors and the Dublin rules, dating from 2014 and discussed here, got nowhere). The issue may well arise again now that the legislation is being revised a further time, in particular as regards the Dublin rules, where (as discussed here), the Commission seeks to overturn the Court’s prior ruling in favour of unaccompanied minors.

Legalese aside, what is the impact of the new judgment for the families of young refugees? It means they can come straight to the Member State where their child lives, without having to go through the Dublin process first. (Although the Dublin rules allocate responsibility to the State where a family member is a refugee, there are sometimes problems applying this in practice; and the Commission proposal to amend the Dublin rules seeks to undercut those family rules indirectly). When they arrive, they will have access in principle to rights of access to employment et al on the same basis as their young refugee family member, as set out in the qualification Directive.

But most fundamentally, the ruling means that family members have safe passage: the obligation to give them authorisation for legal entry means they can travel to the EU without having to pay smugglers and risk mistreatment or drowning en route. So it’s no exaggeration to say that this judgment could literally save the lives of the parents of some vulnerable young refugees.

Barnard & Peers: chapter 26

JHA law: chapter I:5, I:6

Photo credit: care4calais.org

Citizens’ Rights after Brexit: A Personal Perspective

Professor Steve Peers, University of Essex

I rarely say anything very personal on this blog – or indeed, in any other context. But I think it’s important to discuss immigration more often from a personal perspective, not just in the abstract. Of course economic statistics are useful when discussing economic impact, and I hope my detailed legal analysis of the citizens’ rights provisions of the draft Brexit withdrawal agreement is useful for activists and negotiators. Yet since migrants are often compared to pestilence or floods, I think it’s necessary to point out how they are actually individuals and families living day-to-day lives – and how changes in immigration rules will affect them as people, not as insects or natural disasters.

I’m not directly affected by Brexit immigration issues as such. But I did migrate to Canada as a child, and as I’ll explain, I think my story is relevant by analogy to explain the problems that EU27 and UK citizens who have moved may face after Brexit, and why many of them are concerned and annoyed. Some other people’s stories will have been more challenging than mine; but my case here isn’t for sympathy for me, but for empathy for others.

I moved to Canada aged 8 with my parents. My dad had been recruited for a factory job, and my mum hoped to continue her teaching career. But my mum found that, contrary to what she was told, she couldn’t continue teaching without retraining from scratch, starting with a four-year degree. This wasn’t feasible, so she took a series of other, less well-paid jobs instead. And my dad soon found that he had merely swapped one troubled industrial city in Britain for another troubled industrial city in Canada. The job he’d been recruited for vanished, and he had spells of unemployment and time off work due to illness. Eventually, he returned to England on his own.

Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way; but any unhappy family can have its life made even worse by the workings of immigration law. Yet despite my parents’ employment problems and my dad’s eventual departure, this didn’t happen to us. No surprise knocks on the door. No sickness in our stomachs as we opened an official letter. No concern that answering the phone would be the first step in our removal from the country.  No need to face a “hostile environment” when we opened a bank account, rented a flat, or went to school or work, at the behest of a failed political advisor who had built a cult around an absurd net migration target.

Why not? Because, when we first landed at the airport in Canada, we had a meeting with immigration officials that lasted about three days – at least, as 8-year-olds measure time. (In adult time, it was probably a couple of hours). As a result of that meeting, when we stepped out of the airport, my classic black British passport had stapled inside it a precious pink form – granting me, along with my parents, permanent residence status already.

Let’s map this on to what EU27 citizens who are in the UK already will face after Brexit. Those who are already here will have to apply for “settled status” – even if they already have permanent residence. In principle this status will be granted unless they have a serious criminal conviction, but the Home Office is renowned for its high error rate. Also, there are gaps in the agreement – for instance, for those returning to the UK with a non-EU family, or for those who were staying at home full-time for family reasons.  

Compared to my own situation, having to meet the permanent residence criteria could have been a problem. My parents’ gaps in employment, and my father’s departure, would have counted against us (my mother wasn’t a citizen of Canada or the UK, so by analogy wouldn’t have had a free movement right in her own name). The Brexit withdrawal agreement continues a special rule in EU free movement law which protects children of a former worker who are in school, and their parent carer. That would have applied to me and my mum; but the case law says that it’s not a route to permanent residence, and the exact employment and benefits rights of the parent aren’t clear. Moreover, the withdrawal agreement has limits on the recognition of qualifications; limits like that when we moved had destroyed my mum’s teaching career.   

The withdrawal agreement stores up problems for other families in future, too. The UK government fought relentlessly to limit admission of family members of EU27 citizens after Brexit Day, not caring that this would equally limit family reunion for UK citizens in the EU27 too. In the text tabled yesterday, it was clear that the UK government had “won”: future spouses and other close relatives will be subject to more restrictive national law after the end of the post-Brexit transition period. Note that this won’t just apply to non-EU family members of EU27 citizens, but to EU27 citizens’ EU27 family members too; and the effect of Brexit will also be to limit family reunion for UK citizens who have an EU27 family member. (There’s an exception to these rules for children of EU27 citizens, but only if they have custody of the children; so that exception may not matter much if the spouse who has custody can’t be admitted). A whole category of vulnerable families – kids who are British citizens, with a non-EU parent who might face expulsion – are simply left out of the withdrawal agreement altogether.

So future families will have fewer rights under the withdrawal agreement; everyone has to reapply for lesser rights than they have now; and some people are left out of the agreement entirely. While the UK government has promised to protect some of the latter (returning UK citizens, and carers) unilaterally, can it be trusted?  And can the Home Office be trusted to make every decision correctly, in light of its history of administrative problems?  

Let’s hope so; but I can see why some EU27 citizens who came to this land with such hope now regard its government with such fury. Recall that UK citizens living in the EU27 states were promised (in a Daily Telegraph article by Leave campaigners widely disseminated during the referendum) that international law would automatically guarantee their full acquired rights, including free movement within the EU27 states (which is not protected by the draft withdrawal agreement). Similarly, the official Leave campaign likewise promised to guarantee “no less favourable rights” for EU27 citizens in the UK, with “no change” to their position; and they would be “automatically granted indefinite leave to remain”.

I’ve even experienced this ethical gap first hand, when I worked with a number of people to suggest a model for giving EU27 citizens a unilateral guarantee of their rights in the UK. Two Leave-supporting MPs – Gisela Stuart and Suella Fernandes (now a minister in the Brexit department) supported the idea, but then voted against such guarantees in Parliament.  All this, before we even consider statements made on buses or about Turkey.  As Brexiters’ unlikely hero might have said: never in the course of British political history have so many been lied to so much by so few.  

Photo: author’s passport, age 8

Barnard & Peers: chapter 27

All of life is changed: The impact of Brexit on UK nationals living in other EU Member States

Sarah McCloskey and Tamara Hervey, Sheffield Law School

After a series of cataclysmic political events, most people can empathise with the stress and anxiety born out of the subsequent uncertainty. At this time, the people who are enduring the greatest burden are those who have enjoyed a right to free movement exercised in good faith without concern that it might be taken away. Such is Brexit: the source of frustration, a nuisance of the daily news to many, but for EU citizens in the UK and UK nationals living in other Member States, it holds the potential to fundamentally change their very way of life. Without for a moment disregarding the (moral and economic) significance of the former group, we focus here on the latter.

What do the UK government’s proposals mean for UK nationals in the EU-27? What does it mean for their “right to remain, healthcare arrangements under the EU social security agreements, and pension entitlements and payments”? As Strumia highlights, the UK’s offer focuses on EU citizens in the UK. But in a negotiation, the offers made on one side have implications for those on the other. We seek to deduce from the UK’s negotiating position what it might mean for UK nationals in the EU-27.

UK’s Negotiating Position

Despite the hopes for "a magnanimous gesture on the part of the Prime Minister,” the UK government has maintained its stance that a unilateral offer to EU-27 nationals resident in the UK on ‘Brexit Day’ would compromise its negotiating position. Thus, its proposal is founded on the condition of reciprocity. Of course, we remain uncertain as to the outcome of the negotiations. Nevertheless, we can consider the extent to which the UK’s position is a “fair and serious” offer (as the UK government has portrayed) by comparison with the EU’s prior counterpart proposal.

According to the UK negotiating position, upon the UK's exit from the EU, EU citizens in the UK will be required to apply for a new residence status within a grace period of two years. Despite promises of a “streamlined” procedure with incurred fees set at a “reasonable level”, the proposal has faced criticism for subjecting even those who have already obtained a certificate of permanent residence to this new application process. Reciprocity on these terms would dictate that UK nationals in the EU-27 must therefore expect analogous treatment under their post-Brexit status of “third country nationals” (TCNs). They would need to apply for a new residence status under the immigration law of the EU Member State in which they reside. And again, if reciprocity applies, while those who arrive before the yet-to-be-specified date will be granted a temporary status that allows them the opportunity to accrue the vital 5 years of residence, those who arrive at any time thereafter will have no such protection or special treatment. Instead, they would be subject to ordinary immigration law.

Further, any disputes would have to be settled through national courts in the EU-27 country, without any recourse to a supranational authority (such as the CJEU) for a definitive settlement. It would be significantly more difficult to enforce residence and other rights than it is at present.

Under the UK negotiating position, those EU nationals who are successful will be granted what is referred to as "settled status" in UK law pursuant to the Immigration Act 1971. This is subject to certain criteria, including that the applicant must have been resident in the UK before an (as yet un-) specified date (that will fall between 29 March 2017, when the Article 50 letter was sent, and Brexit Day) and have completed a period of 5 years’ continuous residence. It is worth noting here that the UK government has not outlined its definition of “continuous residence” and, given the Prime Minister’s hostility towards the CJEU, it cannot be presumed that it mirrors that accepted in EU law.

Again, if applied reciprocally, UK nationals currently resident in the EU-27 (as EU-27 nationals currently resident in the UK) would be potentially precluded from relying on the benefits of free movement to visit family or for work-related events, for example, in case such visits interrupt their period of continuous residence for longer than permitted under the relevant law. Further, as Strumia notes, this means that the UK’s present protection of free movement is meaningless for EU citizens living in the UK, as any such exercise could be to the detriment of their post-Brexit application.  Like so many other issues, the devil is in the detail and thus, it remains to be seen just how “smooth and simple” acquiring these new rights will be.

Turning to the more specific issues of pensions, child benefits, education, and healthcare, the UK’s negotiating position offers a little more information. On pensions, the UK’s position is explicit that ‘the UK will continue to export and uprate the UK State Pension within the EU’. Given that 21% of UK nationals in EU-27 countries are over the age of 65, this is a significant commitment. Likewise, the current position on child benefit continues: individuals resident before Brexit Day will be able to export any child benefit to which they are entitled in their country of residence, which is of great importance for divorced and separated families. On education, the right of UK students to remain in the respective EU-27 country applies up until course completion (and not beyond) and those with residence rights have the same access to tuition fees and any maintenance grants as nationals of the host country.

Healthcare, however, poses more complexities. The UK government has proposed a new arrangement ‘akin to the EHIC scheme’ (i.e. the European Health Insurance Card, which currently entitles those covered by their home health care system like the NHS to medical treatment in another EU country).  There are non-EU states incorporated within the EHIC scheme, so in theory the UK could join post-Brexit. But in practice, free movement rights will have to be included. Otherwise, the technical and administrative logistics, outside of the current arrangements for coordination of social security, may prove insuperable. The EU coordination of social security is a rules-based system: it is not a matter of politically negotiated bespoke arrangements. A reciprocal deal (to be part of the rules-based system) may be feasible. Access to health care outside such a system (without free movement, without the possibility of CJEU oversight) is unlikely to be so. If that is so, in principle a reciprocal deal would leave UK nationals resident in the EU to fall back on national law to determine their health care entitlements.

The UK’s negotiating position does not explicitly address a host of other practicalities for UK nationals resident in the EU-27 (and vice versa): equal access to housing; equal tax benefits; entitlement to move to and reside in other EU Member States; and equal entitlements to union membership. This is far from offering the claimed reassurance in the face of uncertainty.

In the absence of such details, the only guiding light is: "After we leave the EU, the UK will no longer be subject to EU law. Free movement rights will come to an end and therefore cannot be carried forward, as an EU legal right, into the post-exit UK legal regime.”

If this is the default, and reciprocity is the basis for future entitlements, the effects for UK nationals in the EU-27 would be to face the same prospect of rights reduction as their EU citizen counterparts in the UK.

Applicable EU law

However, this analysis on the basis of reciprocity ignores the fact that the EU itself already has rules concerning the treatment of non-EU TCNs resident in its Member States. The UK’s rejection of an ‘acquired rights’ approach or, indeed, a bespoke proposal of any kind marks an intention to simply align the status of EU nationals with UK immigration law, with all the procedural and substantive implications that entails. But that approach is not available to the EU-25 (Ireland and Denmark have opted out of this law), who are bound by EU law on non-EU migrants, in particular by the EU’s Long-Term Residence (LTR) Directive. The LTR Directive brings the position of UK nationals resident in the EU-25 within EU law as it provides legal protection to some TCNs. This is a Directive that can be - and has been - enforced before national courts, and is subject to the jurisdiction of the CJEU. (There is also some EU legislation on the position of non-EU citizens who don’t yet qualify for LTR status).

Articles 7 and 8 of the LTR Directive govern the scheme by which long-term resident status is acquired and the residence permit granted. The LTR Directive holds the process to a certain standard, imposes common criteria, requires the grant of LTR status where conditions are satisfied (Article 7 (3), Iida para 39), and guarantees certain rights where applications are successful. Article 7(2), for example, requires applications to be processed within 6 months, and Article 10 states that reasons must be given for decisions.

Subject to certain conditions (outlined below), the Directive confers equal treatment of TCNs to nationals in the host country in numerous areas. These include: access to employment; self-employment; recognition of qualifications; tax benefits; and pensions. The UK’s negotiating position, inasmuch as it fails to offer these matters on a reciprocal basis, appears to assume that this aspect of EU law does not exist.

The entitlements under the LTR Directive (and possibly parallel national laws on long-term residence) are extensive. Assuming that it would be the applicable law if the UK’s proposals were to succeed, or indeed if the UK were to leave the EU without successfully negotiating a withdrawal agreement, this raises a question. The position of UK nationals in the EU-27 would obviously be better if the EU proposal prevailed (particularly for those who do not have long-term residence yet). But how much worse off would UK nationals in the EU-25 be under the UK proposals as compared to the EU’s offer? (The position of UK nationals in Ireland will presumably be a special case because of the common travel area; UK nationals in Denmark would have to rely on Danish law.)

Comparison of EU Proposal and EU Law Position: Long-Term Residence Directive

The EU proposal seeks to maintain the current status of EU citizens in the UK and UK nationals in the EU-27, but without the framework of EU citizenship which is conditional on membership of the EU. By comparison, the LTR Directive has been described as creating a “subsidiary form of EU citizenship”.

The LTR Directive offers TCNs a wide range of rights equal to that of nationals in their host country. It removes Member States’ direct control by outlining that where conditions are met and where there is no Article 6 exception (for public policy or public security), long-term resident status must be granted (Article 7(3)). Ordinary immigration law is not subject to those kinds of external oversights or constraints. However, LTR status remains far from parity with EU citizenship status and, in turn, the EU’s proposal. The material rights are less, the scope is more restrictive, and the acquisition process more arduous.

Equal treatment in respect of social assistance and social protection can be confined to core benefits (Article 11(4)), as defined in the ECJ ruling in Kamberaj. Retention of restrictions to access to employment or self-employed activities where these activities are lawfully reserved to nationals, EU or EEA citizens is also permitted (Article 11(3)(a)). Further, acquiring LTR status does not confer the free movement rights within the EU that its citizens are accustomed to; Article 14 outlines the conditions which must be met to acquire the right to reside in a second Member State for a period exceeding three months. The right to family reunification represents another stark contrast: for TCNs, the highly restrictive Directive 2003/86/EC applies, while the EU proposal guarantees that the Withdrawal Agreement would apply to family members, ‘regardless of their nationality, as covered by Directive 2004/38’. This covers both current and future family members.

Turning to scope, the EU proposal is unequivocal: it captures all 'UK nationals who reside or have resided in EU27 at the date of entry into force of the Withdrawal Agreement', UK nationals who work or have done so in EU27 at that date whilst residing in the UK or another EU27, UK nationals covered by Regulation 883/2004, and (in all cases) their family members. Conversely, Article 3(2) of the LTR Directive outlines numerous exclusions, including TCNs resident due to pursuit of studies or vocational training, seasonal workers, and cross-border service providers.

Further, in exchange for this more limited status, there are a greater number of conditions to satisfy. Beyond its mutual basis with the EU proposal’s requisite 5 years continuous legal residence, the LTR Directive also sets out that TCNs need to: provide evidence that they possess sufficient stable and regular resource to maintain themselves and their family members without recourse to the host Member State's social assistance system; have adequate sickness insurance; and, in some cases, demonstrate compliance with integration conditions imposed by national law. Necessarily, implementation of the UK proposal would therefore subject UK nationals in the EU-27 to a much more demanding application process with likely lower success rates than the more black-and-white EU proposal.

Undoubtedly then, the EU proposal is far more favourable to that offered by the UK. This is not unexpected; while the EU recognises the valuable contribution made by TCNs to the Member States in which they reside, inevitably a proposition vested in the interests of the 3.15 million EU citizens in the UK will comprise a better deal than the residual LTR Directive position. And, for negotiating purposes, offering identical conditions for UK nationals in the EU-27 was necessary.

Nonetheless, were the UK proposal to prevail, its nationals are still afforded better protection than their EU citizen counterparts in the UK. The LTR Directive and Article 7(3) in particular represent a safety net to which the EU-25 are held to account. There is no such equivalent for EU citizens in the UK who, post-Brexit, would be entirely at the mercy of ordinary immigration law were the UK’s position adopted.

Non-reciprocity

There is an undeniable gap between the EU negotiating position and the LTR Directive. However, it is to some extent quantifiable. In contrast, the extent of the chasm between the current position of EU nationals in the UK and the UK’s proposal for their post-Brexit future is not yet known. Moreover, the UK’s silence on numerous existing rights does not bode well. While the comparable certainty of the LTR Directive is enough to be relatively reassuring to UK nationals, those who do not yet qualify for the status will be subject only to national immigration law and thus face the same level of uncertainty as EU citizens in the UK.

It might seem surprising that the UK’s response to the EU proposal is so weak. But perhaps this is somewhat accounted for by the difference in numbers: in comparison to the 3.15 million EU citizens in the UK, there are an estimated 900,000 UK nationals in the EU-27. Most of them do not vote in UK general elections. Perhaps they are the ‘sacrificial lambs’ of these negotiations. But this fails to account for the 60% of UK nationals who want to keep their EU citizenship. (Notably, this number increases by 20% for the up and coming political force that are the 18-24 year olds.) If these polls are to be believed, the UK government has a greater investment in a good deal than their proposals implied they thought to be the case. Lest it further alienate the electorate, the UK government should reconsider the EU’s position, taking into account applicable EU law, and provide an injection of reality into its negotiating stance.

Barnard & Peers: chapter 27

Photo credit: Irish Times

Expulsion of seriously ill migrants: a new ECtHR ruling reshapes ECHR and EU law

Dr Lourdes Peroni*, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Ghent University Human Rights Centre (ECHR aspects) and Professor Steve Peers (EU law aspects)

In what is possibly one of the most important judgments of 2016, Paposhvili v. Belgium, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has memorably reshaped its case law on when Article 3 ECHR (which bans torture or other inhuman or degrading treatment) applies to the expulsion of seriously ill migrants. In a unanimous judgment, the Court leaves behind the restrictive application of the high Article 3 threshold set in N. v. the United Kingdom and pushes for a more rigorous assessment of the risk of ill-treatment in these cases. For us at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University, it was a thrill to intervene as a third party in such an important case. In our third party intervention we submitted that Paposhvili offered a unique opportunity to depart from the excessively restrictive approach adopted in N. We are delighted that the Grand Chamber has seized the opportunity to re-draw the standards in this area of its case law in a way that does fuller justice to the spirit of Article 3.

This main part of the post addresses the ECtHR’s interpretation of the ECHR in Paposhvili, while in the Annex to this post, Steve Peers considers its application within the scope of EU law.

The ECHR judgment

Mr. Paposhvili, a Georgian national living in Belgium, was seriously ill. He claimed that his expulsion to Georgia would put him at risk of inhuman treatment and an earlier death due to the withdrawal of the treatment he had been receiving in Belgium (for more on the facts, see my previous post). He died in Belgium last June, while his case was pending before the Grand Chamber. The Court did not strike his application out of the list. It found that “special circumstances relating to respect for human rights” required its continued examination based on Article 37 § 1 in fine ECHR (§ 133). The Court held that there would have been a violation of Article 3 if Belgium had expelled Mr. Paposhvili to Georgia without having assessed “the risk faced by him in the light of the information concerning his state of health and the existence of appropriate treatment in Georgia.” It found a similar violation of Article 8 if Belgium had expelled him without having assessed the impact of his return on his “right to respect for his family life in view of his state of health.”

Opening Up “Other Very Exceptional Cases”

The Chamber judgment in Paposhvili followed N. and Yoh-Ekale Mwanje v. Belgium where the Court had taken into account that “the applicants’ condition had been stable as a result of the treatment they had been receiving, that they were not ‘critically ill’ and that they were fit to travel” (§ 119). The Chamber thus concluded that though Mr. Paposhvili suffered from “a fatal and incurable disease … his conditions are all stable and under control at present; his life is therefore not in imminent danger and he is able to travel” (§ 120).

As readers might remember, the N. Grand Chamber established that removing a non-national suffering from a serious illness to “a country where the facilities for the treatment of that illness are inferior to those available in the Contracting State may raise an issue under Article 3, but only in a very exceptional case” (§ 42). The Grand Chamber concluded that the applicant’s circumstances in N. were not exceptional, as found in D. v. United Kingdom (§ 42). D was critically ill, close to death, and had no prospect of medical care and family support in his home country. The N. Grand Chamber, however, left a window open: it did not exclude that “there may be other very exceptional cases where the humanitarian considerations are equally compelling” (§ 43, emphasis added).

In our third party intervention, we argued that being medically stable and fit to travel as a result of the treatment received should not be a determining criterion in allowing an expulsion. We respectfully invited the Court to develop a less extreme approach, one that considered the difference between applicants’ suffering in the sending state and the suffering they would face in the receiving state. The aim, we submitted, should be to determine whether the reduction of applicants’ life expectancy and the deterioration of their quality of life would be such as to reach the level of severity required by Article 3. The applicant argued that his expulsion to Georgia would place him at risk of “a severe and rapid deterioration in his state of health leading to his swift and certain death” (§ 148). He asked the Court “to go beyond its findings in N. v. the United Kingdom” and to define “a realistic threshold of severity that was no longer confined to securing a ‘right to die with dignity’” (§ 149).

The Paposhvili Grand Chamber enters through the window N. left open. It notes that since N. no other “very exceptional cases” had been found (§ 178). It importantly recognizes that the application of Article 3 only to persons close to death has deprived those whose condition was less critical but who were still seriously ill from “the benefit of that provision” (§ 181). In a pivotal paragraph, the Grand Chamber considers

… that the “other very exceptional cases” within the meaning of the judgment in N. v. the United Kingdom (§ 43) which may raise an issue under Article 3 should be understood to refer to situations involving the removal of a seriously ill person in which substantial grounds have been shown for believing that he or she, although not at imminent risk of dying, would face a real risk, on account of the absence of appropriate treatment in the receiving country or the lack of access to such treatment, of being exposed to a serious, rapid and irreversible decline in his or her state of health resulting in intense suffering or to a significant reduction in life expectancy. The Court points out that these situations correspond to a high threshold for the application of Article 3 of the Convention in cases concerning the removal of aliens suffering from serious illness (§ 183). Emphasis added.

This is a graceful move that softens the unduly restrictive approach that had so far been followed in cases concerning the expulsion of seriously ill migrants. Paposhvili thus comes to fill what Judge Lemmens calls a “gap in the protection against inhuman treatment” (concurring opinion in Paposhvili § 3) by including as exceptional more than just cases of imminent death. My first impression is that the Court does not formally leave behind N.’s exceptional character and the high threshold of Article 3 in cases concerning the expulsion of seriously ill non-nationals (see last sentence § 183 and Judge Lemmens’ opinion § 3). Rather, it appears to open up what in practice has resulted in a limited application of the high threshold. The commendable effect of the Court’s move is, in any event, a less extreme approach more compatible with the spirit of Article 3. Elements of both our third party intervention and the applicant’s arguments are reflected positively in the Grand Chamber reasoning in this regard.

Real Rather Than Theoretical Access to “Sufficient” and “Appropriate” Care

In our third party intervention we proposed that the risk assessment should consider the adequacy of the medical care available in the receiving state and the person’s actual access to such care. The question, we argued, is not just whether adequate treatment is generally available but, crucially, whether the available treatment would in reality be accessible to the person concerned. The applicant argued that the alleged Article 3 violation should be examined “in concreto,” taking into consideration, among other things, “the accessibility of treatment in the country of destination” (§ 139).

The Grand Chamber seizes the occasion to meticulously set out a range of procedural duties for the domestic authorities in the ECHR state parties. All these duties point in one clear direction: a more rigorous assessment of the risk as required by the absolute nature of the Article 3 prohibition (Saadi v. Italy § 128). In assessing the alleged risk of ill-treatment, the domestic authorities should verify whether the care available in the receiving state is “sufficient and appropriate in practice for the treatment of the applicant’s illness so as to prevent him or her being exposed to treatment contrary to Article 3” (§ 189, emphasis added). The domestic authorities should also consider “the extent to which the individual in question will actually have access to this care and these facilities in the receiving State” (§ 190, emphasis added). Referring to existing case law, the Court points to several factors to be taken into account: “cost of medication and treatment, the existence of a social and family network, and the distance to be travelled in order to have access to the required care” (§ 190).

Duty to Obtain Assurances from the Receiving State

With reference to Tarakhel (a 2014 ECtHR ruling on the application of the EU’s Dublin rules on allocation of asylum responsibility), our third party intervention proposed that Article 3 impose on the domestic authorities in the returning state the procedural duty to seek or obtain assurances from the receiving state that the person concerned would actually have access to the treatment s/he needed. We argued that access to appropriate medical care should not be a theoretical option, but a real and guaranteed one, and the burden of proving that such a real option exists should lie on the expelling state (on assurances and the benefits of adopting this path, see Eva Brems’ commentary on Tatar v. Switzerland).

On this point, the Grand Chamber states in paragraph 191:

Where, after the relevant information has been examined, serious doubts persist regarding the impact of removal on the persons concerned – on account of the general situation in the receiving country and/or their individual situation – the returning State must obtain individual and sufficient assurances from the receiving State, as a precondition for removal, that appropriate treatment will be available and accessible to the persons concerned so that they do not find themselves in a situation contrary to Article 3 (on the subject of individual assurances, see Tarakhel, cited above, § 120).

Conclusion

There is so much more to say about the Court’s reasoning in Paposhvili. I have highlighted some of its most remarkable Article 3 principles. Together with others, such as the one establishing when the responsibility of the returning state is engaged (§ 192), these principles firmly move a body of the Court’s case law closer to its principles on the absolute nature of the Article 3 prohibition.

*This part of the post is reblogged with permission from the Strasbourg Observers blog

Barnard & Peers: chapter 26

JHA4: chapter I:7

Photo: OLV hospital, Belgium

Photo credit: Sapa group

Annex: the impact on EU law

By Professor Steve Peers

How does this judgment impact upon EU law?

First of all, it’s necessary to explain the existing EU law position, set in the Abdida and M’Bodj judgments of the ECJ, which was referred to in the ECtHR judgment (paras 120-22), and which I discussed further here. In short, ‘medical cases’ are not within the scope of EU asylum law, either as regards refugee status or subsidiary protection (M’Bodj). However, if the person concerned faces an expulsion order, then the Returns Directive applies. (Note that the latter Directive doesn’t apply to the UK, Ireland or Denmark.)

Although the Returns Directive was mainly intended to ensure removal of irregular migrants from the territory, in ‘medical cases’ (at least), as interpreted by the ECJ in Abdida, it has the opposite effect. According to the Court, the requirement in Article 5 of the Directive to ‘respect the principle of’ non-refoulement means that irregular migrants who fall outside the scope of EU asylum law but nevertheless face an Article 3 ECHR risk, as defined in the case law of the ECtHR, cannot be removed. Moreover, in further displays of legal alchemy, the ECJ ruled that the challenge to their removal must have suspensive effect, and they must receive the necessary health care and social benefits.  

The ECJ has not developed this case law since, although further relevant cases are pending. In MP, the Court has been asked to clarify the line between asylum cases and medical cases, where the medical conditions are more directly linked to persecution or serious harm suffered in the country of origin. In Gnandi, it has been asked to clarify the suspensive effect of a legal challenge in medical cases, following a failed asylum application. In K.A. and others, the Court has been asked about the requirement to ‘take due account’ of family life in Article 5 of the Returns Directive; its ultimate ruling might be relevant to the ‘non-refoulement’ aspect of the same clause by analogy. Equally in Nianga the Court has been asked whether Article 5 applies to the decision to issue a return decision or removal order in the first place: a crucial point because if it does not apply, the person concerned might well fall outside the scope of EU law entirely.  

What impact will the new ECtHR ruling have on the interpretation of EU law? First of all, there’s nothing to suggest it will, by itself, move the dividing line between asylum cases and medical cases, as applied by the ECJ. So we are still looking at the interpretation of the Returns Directive, if that Directive applies.

Since the ECJ committed itself to follow the case-law of the ECtHR as regards medical cases when interpreting the non-refoulement provision of the Returns Directive, it should follow that the new ECtHR ruling applies to the Directive too. Therefore this enlarges the group of people who can benefit from the specific provisions of EU law as interpreted by the ECJ, as regards suspensive effect of appeals and access to health care and social benefits.

Equally the ECtHR’s strong stress on the procedural elements of such cases logically applies by analogy to cases falling within the scope of the Returns Directive. While the ECJ in the Abdida judgment did not refer to its own jurisprudence on the right to a hearing for irregular migrants (discussed here), it is now necessary to update that approach in light of the ECtHR ruling, given the strong link which the latter judgment establishes between the procedural and substantive aspects of what I have referred to as ‘alternative protection’. The ECJ will have an opportunity to address this issue in the months to come, in the pending cases referred to above.

While the ECtHR judgment referred to a need to cooperate with the country of origin in order to check conditions there, in the EU context this might arguably in some cases entail by analogy a check on health conditions in another Member State, which would be responsible for that person under the Dublin rules. The ECJ has yet to determine how its interpretation of the Returns Directive in medical cases fits together with the application of the Dublin rules, which in principle apply if the person concerned has at one point applied for international protection (refugee status or subsidiary protection) within the EU. (Mr. Paposhvili was originally subject to the Dublin rules, but it seems that the plan to remove him to Italy pursuant to those rules petered out).  

Finally, it should be noted that the ECtHR also found a breach of Article 8 ECHR (the right to family life), on similar procedural grounds. This might be relevant to interpretation of the EU’s family reunion Directive, for those who fall within the scope of that Directive and who argue on the basis of the factors to consider during expulsion proceedings pursuant to Articles 17 and 18 of that law.