Saturday, 8 March 2025

Revolutionizing Law? Exploring experimental regulations and artificial intelligence Sandboxes in the AI Act

 


 

Davide Rauhe

 

Photo credit: Chief Photographer, MoD

 

Executive Summary

 

This blog post explores the emergence of experimental regulations and policies with focus on its gained prominence within the European Union in the recent years.

 

As emerging technologies, especially in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), continue to shape our societies, there is a growing need for flexible regulatory approaches that can adapt to rapidly evolving technological landscapes. Experimental regulation and Regulatory sandboxes have gained popularity as a potential solution to foster innovation while ensuring the maintenance of minimum standards in fundamental rights and ethical questions.

 

Therefore, special focus shall be laid upon the significance of regulatory sandboxes and their implementation in the new AI Act on EU-level. This post analyzes the significance of these new law-making methods and answers the question whether or not lawmakers can benefit from them.

 

I. Introduction

 

Regulation and legislation can have strong impacts on the economy and society of a country. However, both are still regarded as a merely bureaucratic action, despite its influence on economic and social development. Indeed, legislation is by some even considered a major force in enabling capitalistic structures, assuming that law itself can create capital by allocating resources either by allowing, shaping or even prohibiting certain economic behaviors.[1] This is particularly the case when sudden and impactful technological improvements are made as with them usually a shift in political and economic power is recorded as well – its design and scope is therefore of even greater importance.[2] This applies especially to the European Union as legislator, because the EU as a regulative body influences other jurisdictions all over the world – a process often describes as the so-called Brussels-effect.[3]

 

With the emergence of increasingly complex technological and innovative economic models in various economic sectors such as finance, commerce and others, there has been a greater demand for more diverse and innovative regulatory approaches in various sectors. However, the protection of fundamental rights standards takes a key role in this discussion as well as the age of “information” or “surveillance” capitalism comes with an increased danger for fundamental rights. Furthermore, new technologies often tend to change the distribution of wealth within societies and therefore possibly lead to either the reduction or the growth of inequality depending on how they are regulated.[4] The misalignment of innovation and regulation can therefore be extremely problematic for societies.[5] Major reasons for a misalignment have been localized in information gaps of regulators, the inability of regulators to fully grasp the innovational model itself and the invisibility of certain innovational flaws only until they become critical and therefore unmissable.[6]

 

Experimental regulations and regulatory Sandboxes may provide a fitting and promising remedy to these conditions. Both concepts promise to handle innovative business models more effectively through the implementation of different adaptability and adjustment measures while also securing a sophisticated human rights standard. The discourse over these specific forms of regulation gained more prominence with the recent improvements of artificial intelligence (AI), a generic term that encompasses various technologies that are considered to have some form of intelligent behavior, and its spreading usage in various economic and scientific sectors. Especially with the public roll out of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence powered Large Language Models (LLM), the potential of Artificial intelligence became more apparent to a greater circle of persons, including policymakers.[7]

 

With the next technological milestones in artificial intelligence development already on the horizon, generally referred to as superintelligence, a dedicated and consistent approach is essential here.[8] The goal in this regard is to reach so-called superalignment, which translates to agile and adaptive regulation combined with state of the art monitoring and reactional measures for any form of super-intelligent machines.[9] But there is still a long way to go. Until then, however, the goal must remain to reach an alignment as far as possible.

 

Due to the rapid evolution of this technology and its improvements and changes, experimental regulation and sandboxes seem to serve here as the right method to effectively regulate this technology while not preventing economic and/or scientific growth using it. As seen in the recent implementation of the AI Act and its use of experimental legislation and sandboxes these lawmaking forms found their way into one of the most discussed and anticipated EU regulations in the recent years. The EU's AI Act represents therefore a significant milestone, using the concept of regulatory sandboxes on the EU-Level for probably the technology of the 21st century.

 

This blogpost tries to assess whether this legislative approach is the right measure to tackle artificial intelligence by analyzing its historical background and the legal implications of it. After that, the case of experimental regulations and legislative sandboxes and their effective provision in the AI act will be addressed through a case study on the AI act.

 

II. Experimental Regulation and Regulatory Sandboxes

 

To comprehensively analyze the concept of experimental regulation and regulatory sandboxes, particularly in the realm of AI, it is essential to clarify its specific meaning.


1. Experimental Regulation

 

Experimental Regulation is inherently designed to serve as a more adaptive and collaborative approach to regulatory compliance in comparison to more conventional regulation methods, offering a framework that fosters innovation while ensuring accountability. Generally speaking, experimental regulation can be seen as legislation which authorizes, monitors and executes legal experiments.[10]

 

In its core, experimental regulation serves as an evidence-based form of law making in opposition to the conventional “trial & error” approach.[11] Experimental regulation tries to limit the unpredictability of that approach to an acceptable amount.

 

The most notable features of experimental regulation are its temporal nature, its derogation from current, already existing statutes and finally the evaluation of the results stemming from the execution of the experiment.[12] It can be therefore defined as a form of legislation that includes legislative measures on trial that serve the sole purpose of evaluating its effectiveness and practicability before its widespread and definitive implementation.


Experimental regulations are therefore a method for piloting fresh rules on a limited scale to assess their practical efficacy, tailor them to evolving conditions, and empower regulatory authorities to gain insights from the outcomes acquired in real-world scenarios.[13] In this regard experimental regulation serves as a form of anticipatory and flexible regulation which encompasses preventive citizen protection while promoting innovation at the same time; its experimental framework and limited scale allows private actors and state authorities to analyze possible outcomes of technologies as well as of the regulation itself in a more detailed, safe and overall sophisticated way.[14] Due to real-time feedback and constant evaluating of outcoming results, it is specially feasible for subjects and industries that require a fast and reactive regulative response to practical issues.

Furthermore, experimental regulation can easily adapt to cultural changes in economic behavior as itself is changing and adapting constantly as well.[15] While it does not make sense to apply old regulation, which for instance was made for regulating taxi and cab services to more innovative transport companies like Uber, experimental regulation could adapt and adjust its rules to the seemingly similar, but essentially different business models of new market players more easily.[16] The case-by-case approach of experimental regulation promises here a coherent and up to date regulation even in times with increasingly faster changing industries and economic realities.[17] Moreover, it can even lead to a better cost-effectiveness of state spending as potential negative monetary impacts can be detected faster and the regulation can be adjusted before its widespread establishment.


2. Regulatory Sandboxes

 

Another and more recent form of experimental regulation is Regulatory Sandboxes. As has been the case with experimental regulation, one reason why sandboxes are being promoted is that traditional legislation is no longer regarded as adequately fitting to regulate innovative business models. These frequently outpace regulatory development, which can stifle innovation or lead to unregulated deployments, which could be seen in the case of Big Tech. Here, traditional legal measures like competition law weren’t capable of regulating these companies effectively during their rise-ups.[18] In fact it could be even argued that their entire business-model cannot be monitored with previous existing measures.[19]


The alternative to the mere adjustments of already existing regulatory frameworks could be the introduction of regulatory sandboxes. Introduced for the first time in 2016 within the UK for the enhancement of innovation within the fintech sector, regulatory sandboxes can serve as a method to effectively promote innovation while mitigating compliance with regulation.[20]

Sandboxes facilitate close cooperation between public and private entities and provide secure environments for fostering innovation by either temporarily applying an alternate regulatory framework to a (pre-)selected group of companies or by providing guidance on compliance through public actors.[21] Usually, but not necessarily, both is the case. It therefore is a safe space for (often) start-ups and established companies to test new technologies, products, or services that are usually not compliant with current legislations within a limited, well-defined scope and under public supervision.[22]

 

These controlled, yet real-world environments allow for a sophisticated testing of services, products and/or market approaches while minimizing the risks associated with unchecked and new technologies as they affect here only a limited circle of individuals and/or companies with proper safeguards provided.[23] The sandboxes‘ duration depends on the decision-making authority, but they usually last up to 12 months.[24]


While the private parties involved in the sandbox regime gain important information on client impressions, lawmakers can learn from emerging technologies and refine already existing regulations, ensuring this way the maintenance of an ethical but also efficient regulation.[25] In contrast to experimental regulation in the narrow sense, regulative sandboxes do not always foresee the derogation of existing legislature within the laboratory-like framework.[26] Here, the focus lies more on the collaborative factor between companies and the regulator and sometimes even only between companies and other private actors.[27]

 

By offering a safe space for experimentation, sandboxes shall promote ideally innovation and learning on both sides, facilitating a two-way dialogue between innovators and regulators. This dialogue is instrumental in fine-tuning the regulatory framework as technologies advance since the knowledge necessary for effectively regulating increasingly more complex economic models becomes more and more complex itself.

 

The micro-optimizing and technology-specific approach promises to lead to satisfactory results, that can then be applied to a greater scale or other sectors/technologies.[28] It also minimizes knowledge gaps between regulators and innovators as the constant exchange of information lets the legislator gain a wider understanding of new products, which makes it in turn easier to adjust regulation to the specifics of the product.[29] Here, it is crucial to adjust regulation in the early stages of the development process as later changes may be already outdated or even harmful to the new standard, which the innovation usually gains more quickly after a certain period of time.[30] Overall Sandboxes can therefore lead to better informed and tested regulation, making it likely to prevent flaws in legal regimes like the before-mentioned competition law.

 

Furthermore, sandboxes can accelerate efficient, coherent, and ‘bullet-proof’ regulation, thus also improving legal certainty for businesses.[31] On top of that they also make it easier for companies to comply with upcoming regulation, as the experiences from the sandbox can already be used to amend or adjust the companies’ respective services, products and mechanisms while the legislative process is still running. Therefore, the time for these products and services to be deployed onto the respective markets can be significantly shortened. An established and well-planed learning and knowledge sharing mechanism could then foster the achieved results and make them useful for future sandboxes and thus amplify the gained knowledge. Sandboxes therefore promise to serve as a framework for nurturing innovation, but also compliance. Regulation thus often turns here into some sort of Governance based on enhanced communication.[32]

 

III. The ‘smart’ legal framework in practice: The AI Act

 

The most recent and significant use of sandboxes can be found in the new AI Act of the EU, which came into effect in August 2024, trying to regulate Artificial Intelligence and its usage.[33]  In general, the EU chose to follow a horizontal regulating approach with implementing the AI Act.[34] In this regard many artificial intelligence tools already fall under current legislation regarding several different sectors, like data protection law or competition law.[35] This is usually not due to the peculiarities of the artificial intelligence used, but rather of varying reasons connected to other issues regarding the product or the company.

 

However, the EU legislator attempted to at least minimize negative consequences of artificial intelligence in particular before the implementation of the AI Act in a non-centralized and somewhat chaotic approach, enshrining some regulative measures in different legal initiatives like the GDPR, cf. Art. 22 or 35.[36] Most of these regulations were of vertical nature, mostly born out of pressure to quickly react to fast-changing technologies and the legal vacuum they nurtured from.[37] The amendments were necessary due to the lack of a general law constraining and defining the powers and limits of this technology.[38] With the AI Act such a law now exists, crossing the threshold of regulation being predominantly reactive to being increasingly more structural and therefore preventive.[39] Through its implementation the EU now seeks to create a comprehensive framework and ecosystem to enable citizens to nurture the benefits of artificial intelligence while simultaneously minimize its risks EU-wide.[40]

 

The EU followed in this regard a mostly risk-based approach, meaning that it categorizes artificial intelligence systems and foundation models into different risk categories with different compliance standards according to the specific risk level the respective artificial intelligence systems falls under.[41] Providers as well as deployers of such systems will then be obliged to perform certain duties and comply with the regulation in order to mitigate risks stemming from risky artificial intelligence.[42] This approach does justice to the different types and areas of application of artificial intelligence, some of which have very different potential risks for society.

 

The AI Act introduces different forms of governance and regulation including complete prohibitions, the possibility of substantive fines, reporting, record keeping, documentation, transparency and human oversight obligations, but also providing among others the option to establish regulatory artificial intelligence sandboxes.[43] Proponents of regulatory sandboxes saw this as a great opportunity for the successful implementation of this legal measure on a large scale. Thus, the EU followed other legislators who already established AI-Sandboxes in their own respective jurisdictions, for example Russia,[44] Brazil, Norway, United Kingdom or Spain.[45]

 

But how and how well did the EU design these sandboxes? As outlined above the specific operationalization and the actual design of a sandbox are extremely influential on its success.

 

IV. The AI Act as a Case Study

 

If regulatory sandboxes are regarded as a sub-category of experimental regulation, both forms of legislation have found their place in the AI Act in the form of a regulatory AI sandbox, which can be found in Art. 57 ff. AI Act. According to these Articles each Member State shall establish at least one AI regulatory sandbox alone or jointly with other Member States and their competent authorities, cf. Art. 57(1) AI-Act. Accordingly, Member States must either introduce such an AI regulatory sandbox themselves or participate in a sandbox established by another Member State. This applies to the extent and only if participation in the sandbox of the other Member State is comparable to the establishment of its own. In this respect, this should be of particular interest and advantage to smaller member states if their own AI sector is too small to introduce an AI regulatory sandbox. Larger member states are likely to regularly fail this restrictive condition, unless the scale of the desired sandbox is correspondingly large.

To prevent segmentation and fragmentation of regulatory sandbox regimes across the EU, the Commission is obliged under Art. 58(1) of the AI Act to adopt an implementing act in which the modalities for the establishment, development, implementation, operation and monitoring of the AI sandboxes. Art. 58 of the Act lists numerous points that must be observed by the national authorities when establishing and operating sandboxes. It is to be welcomed that the national authorities are given an appropriate amount of leeway to shape the concrete form of the sandboxes without it being too extensive. For example, the authorities can determine the length of the respective sandbox themselves, which makes sense in line with the concept of sandboxes based on individual projects, cf. Art. 58(2)(h) AI-Act.

 

As outlined above, the success of regulatory sandboxes and experimental regulation is also highly dependent on the evaluation process as it is a crucial part of conducting the sandbox and gaining important information for future regulation attempts. Here, the national competent authorities responsible for the establishment and operation of the sandboxes must send annual reports to the AI Office and the European artificial intelligence Board – two organs introduced by the AI Act in order to monitor and guarantee the success of the regulation ­– in accordance with Art. 57(16) AI Act, in which they report on the progress and results of the implementation of these sandboxes, including best practices, incidents, lessons learned and recommendations on their establishment and, where appropriate, application and possible revision of this Regulation. Depending on whether the expected and previously mentioned implementing act of the Commission further specifies these evaluation obligations, the standard of the respective assessments could even be increased accordingly.

 

Furthermore the AI-Act provides several organizational points that should guarantee the successful implementation of European Union AI sandboxes. Pursuant to Art. 57(1) AI-Act the Commission may provide assistance in the form of technical support, advice or the providing of tools for the establishment as well as the operation of such AI regulatory sandboxes. Depending on whether – and if yes on how – the support is actually given, the sandbox framework in the AI Act may turn out as a success or a failure. This of course also depends on whether the support of the Commission is needed in the first place. Since the sandboxes will probably remain national to the greatest extent and according to Art. 57(1) AI-Act might be even conducted on a regional or local level, the centralized expertise of the Commission might turn out to be unnecessary. However, when two or more member states establish and/or operate an AI sandbox together according to Art. 57(1) Para. 1, 2 AI-Act, it may be useful to obtain information from a supranational body like the Commission as it might have more supranational resources in the first place.

 

According to Art. 53(17) AI-Act the Commission must create a comprehensive interface to give stakeholders and interested parties an overview of the sandboxes and, if necessary, contact options, which should make the access to the sandboxes easier. The attempt to amplify supranational cooperation and cross-border innovation is reflected several times within the regulation, cf. Art. 57 Para. 1 or 4 AI Act, which stipulate that the sandboxes should be designed in such a way that competent authorities from other member states can also participate if needed. Also, there is the possibility of a European Union AI regulatory sandbox for the EU institutions themselves, which can be established by the European Data Protection Supervisor.

 

All the above-mentioned points promise to guarantee a successful implementation of regulatory AI-sandboxes on an EU level. However, there are also points in which the EU only partly succeeds in establishing a coherent and effective sandbox environment. To effectively attract applicants to participate in a regulatory sandbox there should be exemptions from the existing regulatory burden. However, there is no mention of this in the AI Act, at least not explicitly. The reason for this is not entirely clear. Here too, the legislator could have easily continued to pursue the risk-based approach and made the derogation from existing rules and regulation dependent on the respective risk level of the respective artificial intelligence technology. There should still be incentives for companies to participate in the sandbox, such as faster distribution of products to the European Union market. Especially with a complex technology such as artificial intelligence, it would have made sense to offer incentives to deviate from the now comprehensive legislation in order to try out new approaches and ideas.[46]

 

Rather, a genuine "experimentation clause" should have been chosen here, which would have given the supervisory authority a certain amount of leeway to act flexibly in the application of the existing legal framework and to deviate from it accordingly if necessary.[47] Furthermore, applicants could also be attracted by monetary incentives. Here the providers of artificial intelligence systems that fall under the AI-Act are spared administrative fines as long as they respect the sandbox plan and the terms and conditions for their participation and followed the guidance given by the national competent authority, Art. 57(12) AI-Act.

 

It also has to be noted that AI Sandboxes introduced by the AI-Act do not play a too prominent role in regard to the rest of the regulation. Due to the partly extensively broad wording and categorization of certain artificial intelligence systems, there remains the fear of overregulating the technology;[48] this could have been easily mitigated or even prevented if the sandbox would have been given a more central role in the legislation as this is exactly one of the main advantages of regulatory sandboxes: balancing regulating and innovation.

 

It can be said that by establishing AI regulatory sandboxes, the AI Act has taken an important and necessary step towards the flexible and innovative regulation of artificial intelligence, perhaps the most important technology of this century. The EU has indeed successfully fulfilled many of the points that should be considered when establishing and designing regulatory sandboxes. However, some other points, in particular the lack of flexibility to deviate from the provisions of the AI Act within the sandbox, were implemented rather inadequately by the EU. This is particularly unfortunate because, due to the importance and significance of the AI Act, a full-fledged regulatory sandbox would have sent an important signal to stakeholders, companies and citizens: namely that the EU is an innovative and progressive legislator. After analyzing the sandboxes in the AI Act, this can only be partially attributed to the EU.

 

Since artificial intelligence would have been an excellent application example for effective sandboxes outside of fintech ­– both in terms of the concept of the technology itself and the importance and potential market capitalization of AI-driven business models – it is particularly unfortunate that the EU has only created a partially promising sandbox here.

 

IV. Conclusion

 

While the two discussed forms of smart legislation – experimental regulation and regulatory sandboxes – offer several advantages, they also have flaws that can be mitigated under the right conditions. These approaches introduce innovation and empiricism to a traditionally bureaucratic and slow legislative process, with the aim of rationalizing lawmaking, especially in technocratic fields. However, politics is not always purely rational and should account for emotions and ideologies, as long as they avoid extremism. While these legislative models can be useful in managing disruptive technologies and national emergencies, their effectiveness depends on careful design by legislators. As seen in the AI Act case study, success is not guaranteed, but with continued use, these approaches are likely to improve, benefiting both society and the legislative process. It was expected that the goal of super-alignment could not have been reached by the AI-Act and its use of experimental regulation. However, the EU did take a big step towards a modern approach of law-making and an alignment as far reaching as possible when it comes to the AI-Act. Whether this approach will be successful in regulating such an important and influential technology as AI remains to be seen.

 

 



[1] Pistor, The Code of Capital, passim.

[2] Sabeel Rahman, Artificial Sovereigns: A quasi-constitutional Moment for Tech?, https://lpeproject.org/blog/a-quasi-constitutional-moment-for-tech/.

[3] Bradford, who coined the term in her article, The Brussels Effect, Northwestern University School of Law 2012, Vol. 107, No. 1; see also Siegmann et al., The Brussels Effect of AI Regulations, https://www.governance.ai/research-paper/brussels-effect-ai for further insights on the Brussels Effect in regard to the AI Act. However, it should be noted that the impact of the Brussels effect in the case of the AI Act is questioned by some, as artificial intelligence itself is often already (co-)regulated by other laws that actually focus on data security or intellectual property, for example, cf. Engler, The EU AI Act will have global impact, but a limited Brussels Effect, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-eu-ai-act-will-have-global-impact-but-a-limited-brussels-effect/.

[4] Markovits, Are we prisoners of technological fate?, https://lpeproject.org/blog/are-we-prisoners-of-technological-fate/.

[5] Cf. Ranchordas/Vinci, Regulatory Sandboxes and innovation-friendly Regulation, p. 17.

[6] Ranchordas/Vinci, Regulatory Sandboxes and innovation-friendly Regulation, p. 18.

[7] Smuha, Internet Policy Review 2021, Vol. 10, Iss. 3.

[8] Burkhard, Was ist Superalignment und warum ist es wichtig?, https://medium.com/@pratheekburkhard/was-ist-superalignment-und-warum-ist-es-wichtig-52b94fe37e22.

[9] Heaven, Now we know what OpenAI’s superalignment team has been up to, https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/14/1085344/openai-super-alignment-rogue-agi-gpt-4/; Burkhard, Was ist Superalignment und warum ist es wichtig?, https://medium.com/@pratheekburkhard/was-ist-superalignment-und-warum-ist-es-wichtig-52b94fe37e22.

[10] Ranchordas/Vinci, Regulatory Sandboxes and innovation-friendly Regulation, p. 5.

[11] Van Gestel/Van Dijck, European Public Law 2011, 539.

[12] Cf. Ranchordas, The whys and woes of experimental legislation, p. 419, 420.

[13] Ranchordas, Sunset Clauses and Experimental Regulations: Blessing or Curse for Legal Certainty?, p. 29.

[14] Ranchordas, Experimental Regulations for AI: Sandboxes for Morals and Mores, p. 94.

[15] Dutil/Williams, Canadian Public Administration 2017, p. 562, 571.

[16] Dutil/Williams, Canadian Public Administration 2017, p. 562, 571.

[17] Soeteman-Hernandez et al., NanoImpact 2021, 10031, p. 6.

[18] Cf. among others Khan, Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, passim, in which the author outlines how the legal framework of antitrust law isn’t capable of effectively addressing the challenges Amazon’s business model established.

[19] Khan, Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, passim.

[20] Ahern, European Business Organization Law Review 2021, p. 395, 405; Nabil, Reforming the European Union’s Proposed AI Regulatory Sandbox, https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/reforming-the-european-unions-proposed-ai-regulatory-sandbox/#:~:text=More%20specifically%2C%20an%20AI%20sandbox,for%20compliance%20with%20relevant%20laws.

[21] Ranchordas, Experimental Regulations and Regulatory Sandboxes – Law Without Order?, p. 2.

[22] Cf. Ringe, Why we need a regulatory sandbox for AI, https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/oblb/blog-post/2023/05/why-we-need-regulatory-sandbox-ai.

[23] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2020/11/16/regulatory-sandboxes-and-experimentation-clauses-as-tools-for-better-regulation-council-adopts-conclusions/.

[24] Ahern, European Business Organization Law Review 2021, p. 395, 411.

[25] Ringe, Why we need a regulatory sandbox for AI, https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/oblb/blog-post/2023/05/why-we-need-regulatory-sandbox-ai.

[26] Ranchordas/Vinci, Regulatory Sandboxes and innovation-friendly Regulation, p. 6.

[27] Ranchordas/Vinci, Regulatory Sandboxes and innovation-friendly Regulation, p. 7.

[28] Omarova, Journal of Financial Regulation 2020, p. 78.

[29] This way the so-called Collingridge Dilemma is avoided (at least to a certain extent), cf. Ranchordas/Vinci, Regulatory Sandboxes and innovation-friendly Regulation, p. 16.

[30] Ranchordas/Vinci, Regulatory Sandboxes and innovation-friendly Regulation, p. 16.

[31] Ringe, Why we need a regulatory sandbox for AI, https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/oblb/blog-post/2023/05/why-we-need-regulatory-sandbox-ai.

[32] Ranchordas/Vinci, Regulatory Sandboxes and innovation-friendly Regulation, p. 11.

[33] Friedl/Gil Gasiola, Examining the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, https://verfassungsblog.de/examining-the-eus-artificial-intelligence-act/; Smuha, Internet Policy Review 2021, Vol. 10, Iss. 3.

[34] https://www.psa.ac.uk/psa/news/ai-act-it-golden-standard-or-just-another-over-regulation-symphony-brussels.

[35] Cf. Dotan, AI Regulation: A Step Forward or Ethics Washing?, https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/artificial-intelligence/guest-article/ai-regulation-and-ethics/.

[36] See also Art. 9 GDPR, which prohibits the processing of special categories of personal data under certain conditions and through this for instance the use of biometric categorization systems; Ranchordas, MORALS + MACHINES 1/2021, p. 89, 90.

[39] Chen, China sets restrictions on generative AI, but leaves room for innovation, https://thechinaproject.com/2023/07/21/chinas-new-regulations-on-generative-ai-sets-restrictions-but-leaves-room-for-innovation/; Pasquale, The second wave of alghoritmic accountability, https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-second-wave-of-algorithmic-accountability/.

[40] Ranchordas, MORALS + MACHINES 1/2021, p. 90.

[41] Fraser/Villarino, European Journal of Risk Regulation 2023, p. 1, 4; Friedl/Gil Gasiola, Examining the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, https://verfassungsblog.de/examining-the-eus-artificial-intelligence-act/.

[42] Friedl/Gil Gasiola, Examining the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, https://verfassungsblog.de/examining-the-eus-artificial-intelligence-act/.

[43] Friedl/Gil Gasiola, Examining the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, https://verfassungsblog.de/examining-the-eus-artificial-intelligence-act/; MacCarthy/Propp, Machines learn that Brussels writes the rules: The EU’s new AI regulation, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/machines-learn-that-brussels-writes-the-rules-the-eus-new-ai-regulation/; Smuha, Internet Policy Review 2021, Vol. 10, Iss. 3.

[44] Russia even introduced a sandbox, which also covered Artificial Intelligence applications already back in 2021, cf. Ranchordas, MORALS + MACHINES 1/2021, p. 95.

[45] Nabil, Reforming the European Union’s Proposed AI Regulatory Sandbox, https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/reforming-the-european-unions-proposed-ai-regulatory-sandbox/#:~:text=More%20specifically%2C%20an%20AI%20sandbox,for%20compliance%20with%20relevant%20laws.

[46] Ringe, Why we need a regulatory sandbox for AI, https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/oblb/blog-post/2023/05/why-we-need-regulatory-sandbox-ai.

[47] Ringe, Why we need a regulatory sandbox for AI, https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/oblb/blog-post/2023/05/why-we-need-regulatory-sandbox-ai.

[48] Cf. Streitbörger, Kann der was? Ein kritischer Blick auf die letzten Änderungsvorschläge für den AI-Act, https://blog.ai-laws.org/kann-der-was-bewertung-der-jungsten-anderungsvorschlage-fur-den-ai-act-der-eu/.

Monday, 3 March 2025

The CJEU rules on multiple temporary protection applications but leaves key questions unanswered in Case C‑753/23 (Krasiliva)

 


 

Dr Meltem Ineli Ciger, Associate Professor, Suleyman Demirel University

Photo credit: Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatre, by Konstantin Brizhnichenko, via Wikimedia Commons

 

On 27 February 2025, the Court of Justice delivered its judgment in Case C‑753/23 (Krasiliva). This is the second ruling on the Council Directive 2001/55/EC of 20 July 2001 (Temporary Protection Directive) following the Kaduna decision (Case C‑244/24, joined with C‑290/24), which interpreted Article 7 of the Directive, which concerned the termination of the temporary protection granted to persons benefitting from temporary protection at the option of a Member State, ie who do not fall within the scope of the mandatory obligations for Member States set out in Article 2(1) and 2(2) of the Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/382 of 4 March 2022 (which applied the Directive to those fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine) and the lawfulness of the return decisions adopted in their regard.

In contrast, the Krasiliva judgment concerns Article 8(1) of the Temporary Protection Directive, which requires Member States to provide temporary protection beneficiaries with residence permits. The Court held that a person eligible for temporary protection who has applied for temporary protection and a residence permit in one Member State but has not yet received it, cannot be denied a residence permit attached to a temporary protection status in another Member State solely on that basis. Moreover, the Court reaffirmed in this case the right to appeal a decision on the inadmissibility of an application for a residence permit linked to temporary protection status.

In my previous analysis here, I noted that the Court’s approach in Kaduna was largely predictable. Similarly, this judgment from the Tenth Chamber is unsurprising, and its reaffirmation of the right to challenge a negative residence permit decision is welcome. However, the ruling is particularly significant in how the CJEU addressed the first question concerning multiple temporary protection and residence applications—while notably failing to engage with the second half of that question. The judgment is unfortunately narrowly confined to the issue of denying a permit solely due to a pending residence permit application in another Member State, leaving broader and arguably more pressing issues unaddressed, such as the status of individuals who have already been granted temporary protection in one Member State but later apply elsewhere. Given these omissions and the Court’s handling of the first question, I find the judgment neither sufficiently clear nor well-reasoned.

 

Background of the case

A Ukrainian national entered the EU on 15 July 2022 and applied for temporary protection in Germany on 19 July 2022 before filing a similar request in the Czech Republic on 20 September 2022. The Czech authorities rejected her application on the grounds that she had already sought protection in another Member State. Under Czech law, a temporary protection application rejected because the applicant has previously sought protection in another Member State is not subject to judicial appeal. However, the Prague City Court ruled that it had jurisdiction to review such decisions citing Article 29 of the Temporary Protection Directive (which provides that individuals excluded from temporary protection or family reunification by a Member State have the right to challenge the decision through legal proceedings in that state) and Article 47 of the Charter and determined that the Directive does not support rejecting an application merely because of a previous application for temporary protection in another Member State, since the grounds for exclusion are strictly limited to those listed in Article 28 (namely serious crimes, security threats, or actions contrary to UN principles).

The Prague City Court annulled the Ministry of the Interior’s decision and sent the case back for reconsideration. In response, the Ministry of the Interior appealed, arguing that it is up to the Member State where the application is made to grant protection and that multiple applications should not be allowed. Consequently, the Supreme Administrative Court suspended the proceedings and referred these two questions to the Court for a preliminary ruling (para 21):

(1)      Does Article 8(1) of [Directive 2001/55], having regard also to the Member States’ agreement not to apply Article 11 of that directive, preclude national legislation under which an application for a residence permit to give temporary protection is inadmissible if the foreign national has applied for a residence permit in another Member State or has already been granted a [residence] permit in another Member State?

(2)      Does a person enjoying temporary protection under [Directive 2001/55] have the right to an effective remedy before a tribunal under Article 47 of the [Charter] against the failure of a Member State to grant a residence permit within the meaning of Article 8(1) of [that directive]?’

 

Can a Member State deny a residence permit to a person eligible for temporary protection only because he/she applied for or granted a residence permit in another Member State?

What the CJEU said: Article 8(1) of the Temporary Protection Directive requires Member States to ensure that beneficiaries of temporary protection receive residence permits for the duration of their protection, along with the necessary documentation or equivalent evidence. The Court first confirmed the right of persons falling within the categories referred to in Article 2 of Implementing Decision 2022/382 to apply to the Member State of their choice for a residence permit (para 28). As one might remember, Article 2 of the Council Implementing Decision 2022/382 defines who is eligible for temporary protection in the EU.

Article 11 of the Temporary Protection Directive provides that a Member State must take back a temporary protection beneficiary who ‘without authorisation’ stays in or attempts to enter another Member State unless a bilateral agreement between Member States provides otherwise. The Court also confirmed Article 11 of the Directive does not apply when addressing the abovementioned question, as the Member States chose not to implement it when adopting the Implementing Decision (para 32-33). In view of this, the Court ruled that Article 8(1) must be interpreted to prevent national legislation from denying a residence permit to someone eligible for temporary protection under Article 2 of the Council Implementing Decision 2022/382 solely because they have already applied for, but not yet received, a permit in another Member State (para 33). Furthermore, the Court noted that for such multiple applications, the Member States can (the Court used the term ‘it is open to the authorities of a Member State’) examine and verify whether the person applying for a residence permit falls within the scope of the Council Implementing Decision 2022/382 i.e. eligible for temporary protection and enjoy the status and whether he/she obtained a residence permit in another Member State (para 30).

My analysis: Although in my opinion the Court’s reasoning is not clearly explained at all, its judgment appears to reaffirm the following point: if a person eligible for temporary protection applies for a residence permit in one Member State and then submits a similar application in another, the second Member State cannot reject the application solely because of the earlier submission. Instead, the second Member State should assess the merits of the new application. The authorities in the second Member State may verify whether the applicant qualifies under the relevant temporary protection categories and if they have already obtained a residence permit in another Member State. But the question remains unanswered: if, following an examination on the merits, national authorities determine that the person already holds temporary protection status or has a residence permit in another Member State, can this serve as an automatic ground for rejection?

The Court’s interpretation of Member States’ decision not to apply Article 11 of the Temporary Protection Directive confirms that the Implementing Decision allows Ukrainians, their family members, and a specific subgroup of third-country nationals identified in the Implementing Decision who have fled the Russian invasion to apply for temporary protection in any Member State of their choice. It is also notable that the Court made a particular reference to recital 16 in the Preamble of the Council Implementing Decision, which notes,

Ukrainian nationals, as visa-free travellers, have the right to move freely within the Union after being admitted into the territory for a 90-day period. On this basis, they are able to choose the Member State in which they want to enjoy the rights attached to temporary protection and to join their family and friends across the significant diaspora networks that currently exist across the Union. This will in practice facilitate a balance of efforts between Member States, thereby reducing the pressure on national reception systems. Once a Member State has issued a residence permit in accordance with Directive 2001/55/EC, the person enjoying temporary protection, whilst having the right to travel within the Union for 90 days within a 180-day period, should be able to avail of the rights derived from temporary protection only in the Member State that issued the residence permit.

As previously noted, this approach—granting individuals the right to choose the Member State where they seek protection and reside—stands in stark contrast to the Dublin rules, which do not offer such a possibility for asylum seekers.

Notably, a significant issue, in my opinion, in the implementation of the Temporary Protection Directive concerns Ukrainian nationals who, after being granted temporary protection in one Member State, move to another Member State to apply for temporary protection and residence permits attached to the status. I have personally received many questions about multiple applications in several seminars and judge trainings. However, the Court limited its ruling to a very specific scenario described and did not address this broader question. In a sense, while the Court left open the possibility for Member States to deny a residence permit to individuals who have already been granted temporary protection in another Member State, it did not provide a definitive answer on the issue.

 

Can a person eligible for temporary protection appeal against the failure of a Member State to grant a residence permit?

What the Court said: The Court answered this question as follows:

Article 8(1) of Directive 2001/55, read in the light of Article 47 of the Charter, must be interpreted as meaning that a person enjoying temporary protection under that directive has a right to an effective remedy before a tribunal against a decision to reject as inadmissible an application for a residence permit, within the meaning of Article 8 thereof. (para 40)

My analysis: Given that the Temporary Protection Directive was drafted over two decades ago, it is particularly intriguing to define the precise scope of the right to an effective remedy in the context of temporary protection. The CJEU’s straightforward answer to the said question affirms the right of persons who are eligible for temporary protection to a residence permit and clarifies that Article 47 of the Charter read together with Article 8(1) of the Directive secures the right to challenge such an inadmissibility decision. With this, the Court confirmed that the right to appeal under the Temporary Protection Directive is not limited to Article 29, which covers appeals against exclusion decisions under Article 28 and family reunification rejections. Instead, Article 47 of the CFR should apply to ensure a right of appeal against an inadmissibility decision, as the Directive establishes a clear right to a residence permit. 

The judgment raises further questions for which I do not have definitive answers, making it a worthwhile topic for discussion in the comments section. Does this judgment imply that all individuals whose temporary protection applications are rejected or deemed inadmissible now have the right to appeal such decisions before a tribunal? Can the denial of rights granted to temporary protection beneficiaries under Chapter III of the Directive now be challenged before a tribunal?

 

Analysis

The Temporary Protection Directive typically addresses multiple temporary protection applications through Article 11, which establishes a take-back mechanism. However, given the Member States’ decision not to apply Article 11 or to use the quota system outlined in Article 25 of the Directive, the Directive remains silent on how to manage multiple temporary protection applications. 

In response to concerns over double registrations and access to benefits, the Commission launched the Temporary Protection Registration Platform (TPP) on 31 May 2022. Most Member States now participate in data exchange through this system to prevent duplicate temporary protection registrations and benefits. Member States have developed different approaches to handling multiple temporary protection applications and secondary movements of Ukrainians. For instance, according to the Finnish Immigration Service, “You cannot be granted temporary protection in more than one EU country at a time. If you are granted a residence permit in Finland based on temporary protection, your temporary protection residence permit in another EU country will be cancelled.” In Germany for instance, Ukrainians who already have a residence permit in another Member State can still receive a residence permit. In contrast, Swiss courts (not applying the Directive as such as Switzerland is a non-EU country, but Swiss law is modelled on the Directive) found that the validity of temporary protection or the possibility of renewing it in an EU country precludes the granting of temporary protection (so-called S protection) status in Switzerland. The same approach was followed by the Czech authorities as well.

Given these inconsistencies, the CJEU in Krasiliva upheld the right of individuals eligible for temporary protection under Article 2 of Council Implementing Decision 2022/382 to choose the Member State in which they wish to apply for temporary protection and the associated residence permit. The judgment also clarified that a Member State cannot deem multiple residence permit applications automatically inadmissible but must assess their merits. However, by failing to explicitly address the second part of the first question namely, whether an individual who has already been granted temporary protection and a corresponding residence permit in one Member State can subsequently obtain temporary protection and a residence permit in another Member State, the Krasiliva ruling represents a missed opportunity to harmonise Member State approaches to multiple applications for temporary protection and residence permits.

 

Conclusion

While the Krasiliva judgment provides clarity on the specific application of Article 8(1) of the Temporary Protection Directive, it leaves broader issues unresolved, particularly regarding multiple applications for temporary protection and the associated residence permits. The Court confirmed that a Member State cannot reject a residence permit application solely because the applicant has previously applied for, but not yet received, protection in another Member State. It also reaffirmed that Member States cannot deny the right to appeal against such inadmissibility decisions. These aspects of the ruling are significant in affirming procedural rights within the scope of the Temporary Protection Directive. However, the judgment notably fails to address whether an individual who has already been granted temporary protection and a corresponding residence permit in one Member State may subsequently obtain temporary protection and a residence permit in another Member State. The absence of guidance on this issue creates legal uncertainty, leaving Member States without clear direction on how to handle such multiple applications consistently.

Friday, 28 February 2025

Hamoudi v Frontex, an EU Courts pushback case: Shifting the burden of proof and a duty to assist the Court (a duty of candour?)


 


Antje Kunst*

* Antje Kunst is an international lawyer and barrister of Garden Court North Chambers, admitted to the Bar of England and Wales, and the Bar of Berlin, advising and representing individuals in a wide range of matters related to fundamental rights within the CFSP and other fields. She has appeared in numerous cases before both the Court of Justice and the General Court, within the Court of Justice of the European Union.  

Photo credit: Rock Cohen, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Introduction

On 4 February 2025 the Grand Chamber held a hearing on the appeal of Hamoudi v Frontex in Case C-136/24 against the General Court (GC)’s Order of 13 December 2023. This appeal is taking place alongside the separate challenge in WS v Frontex (see analysis of that case and summary of the hearing).  

The case of Hamoudi v. Frontex concerns Syrian asylum seeker Alaa Hamoudi, who alleges that on 28 April 2020, he and 21 other individuals were subjected to a pushback operation in the Aegean Sea. He claims that upon arriving from Turkey by boat, he entered Greek territory on the island of Samos to seek asylum. Local police intercepted him, confiscated his mobile phone, and later that day, Greek authorities forced him and the others back out to sea. The following day, a vessel from the Turkish coast guard took them aboard. Hamoudi also alleges that on 29 April 2020, while at sea, a private surveillance aircraft operated by Frontex, equipped with a camera, flew over the scene twice.

In February 2022 OLAF issued a highly damaging report on Frontex which addresses incidents of illegal pushbacks involving Frontex assets like Frontex Surveillance Aircraft, in particular in the Aegean Sea, in late April 2020. This report was not made publicly available (see here more on this fact).

In March 2022, Mr. Hamoudi brought an action pursuant to Article 340.2 TFEU  against Frontex, seeking €500,000 compensation for non-material in damage in respect of violations of his fundamental rights, including the prohibition of collective expulsion and the principle of non-refoulement under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The GC dismissed the action by Court Order stating it "manifestly lacked any foundation in law." (para. 62 of the Court Order). The GC found that the appellant’s own written statement taken by an NGO more than a year and a half after the events, a Bellingcat article, and four screenshots from third-party video recordings of the pushback were “manifestly insufficient” to conclusively prove Hamoudi’s presence or involvement in the incident.  It further noted that the claimant could not be identified in the images. Further his own written statement lacked credibility (paras. 40 and 41 of the Court Order).

Hamoudi appealed this decision on 19 February 2024, contending that the General Court erred in its legal assessment and mischaracterized the facts.

Relevance of two ECtHR expulsion cases

In January 2025, in two groundbreaking judgments A.R.E. and G.R.J. v. Greece the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) unanimously confirmed Greece's “systematic practice” of pushbacks of third-country nationals from Greece back to Turkey. Both ECtHR cases are very similar in terms of facts to the Hamoudi case.  The G.R.J.  case which was referred to by the judges during the hearing concerns like in the Hamoudi case a pushback from the island of Samos to Turkey in 2020.

Significantly the parties were asked to comment on the relevance of these two judgments seemingly with a view to consider the ECtHR’s finding on the existence of a “systematic practice” of pushbacks by Greece. The Court might likely to be inspired by the ECtHR approach in these types of cases, if not align its case law with the Strasbourg Court’s large case law on expulsion. Both Courts have engaged in the past in a judicial dialogue, referring to each other’s case law, aiming for consistency in protecting human rights of individuals.

Assisting the court in reaching the correct result

Pushbacks are difficult to prove, in particular when they happen at night and mobile phones are confiscated or destroyed (as happened to the appellant and applicants in ECtHR cases (e.g., in  A.R.E.  para. 266).

In proceedings before the ECtHR, respondent states often deny the facts rather than disclosing relevant records, surveillance footage, or photos and videos documenting the events, as elaborated here. In Hamoudi, Frontex representatives, during the hearing before the Grand Chamber, claimed it was unclear whether Frontex had been present at the scene of the events, noting that "they had not been monitoring the situation from afar through their binoculars" (see here).

The question arises: Is it acceptable for an EU agency like Frontex to present such arguments, displaying a stance similar to that of states before the ECtHR? Or does it, instead, have a duty to assist the Court? Article 24 of the Court’s Statute provides that the Court “may require the parties to produce all documents and to supply all information which the Court considers desirable.” This provision establishes not only a procedural obligation for the parties to cooperate fully with the Court but also an implicit duty to assist the Court in reaching an accurate outcome. The Court here relies on the transparency and good faith of the parties to uncover the relevant facts and produce it before the Court.

In UK public law there is a duty of candour vis-à-vis the Court. The duty of candour requires a public authority "not to seek to win [a] litigation at all costs but to assist the court in reaching the correct result and thereby to improve standards in public administration." (see also here)

This principle is not unknown in member states. In Germany for example pursuant to §99 Administrative Court Procedure Code and §138 Code of Civil Procedure , public authorities must act truthfully and fully cooperate with the administrative courts.

Arguably as an EU agency, Frontex, and based on Article 24 of the Court’s Statute it has a duty to assist the Court in reaching the correct result by providing information and disclosing evidence exclusively within its possession, even if that evidence may be unfavourable to its case. In other words, it is not acceptable for Frontex to adopt the same approach as states in these types of cases.

Furthermore, contrary to what the EU Agency presented before the Court, Frontex also “sits on evidence” -not only the member states- related to its activities collecting evidence when it carries out its assistance and surveillance activities acting under a clear mandate to protect the fundamental rights of individuals in distress at sea, in accordance with Articles 80(2) and 80(3) of the Frontex Regulation.

Impossible proof

The burden of proof imposed by the GC amounted to probatio diabolica, an impossible proof for Mr. Hamoudi.

There might be cases in which applicants are able to provide robust evidence related to their individual situation, such as photographs, video recordings, and witness testimonies. The possession of mobile phones with geolocation capabilities gives victims of pushback operations new means to provide proof of their presence in a certain area or to prove the involvement of Frontex.

In most cases, individuals like Hamoudi face serious practical difficulties in gathering evidence. The incident took place at night and under very stressful conditions, with Hamoudi being in the open sea in a boat. Hamoudi was unable, both physically and mentally, to gather any evidence. (see more on this here) Taking away mobile phones as happened to Mr. Hamoudi makes it impossible for the victim to use such evidence.  This is what the General Court failed to consider.

Applying the rules governing the burden of proof in Strasbourg expulsion cases

The appellant argues in his appeal that the General Court (GC) committed an error of law by failing to properly assess and apply the relevant rules governing the burden of proof. Specifically, the appellant contends that the GC did not consider the legal criteria established by the ECtHR in its expulsion case law, which aligns with the EU Court’s own established practice (e.g., in discrimination cases).

When adjudicating such cases, the ECtHR shifts the burden of proof to the state as elaborated here  where there is different access to information which advantages the state and leaves the applicant without evidence or when the defending State possesses information that could  corroborate or refute the applicant’s allegations. Despite what Frontex alleged at the hearing Frontex certainly has access to information regarding the events in question as also the OLAF report shows. This relates to information regarding its own compliance with its own fundamental rights obligations and the existence of the immaterial harm stemming from the events during the night in question.

The ECtHR expulsion case law provides that once an applicant has furnished prima facie evidence in support of his or her version of events, the burden of proof should shift to the respondent when (a) there is an absence of personalized treatment—such as not being interviewed or having personal details taken—which lies at the very core of the applicant’s complaint, as in the present case; and (b) this absence has contributed to the difficulty in adducing evidence of involvement in the event (see Case of N.D. and N.T. v. Spain, para. 85).

As analysed here in its recent rulings the ECtHR has explicitly acknowledged that the state’s complete denial of alleged facts places the applicant in an inherently difficult evidentiary position, in which they may be unable to establish the veracity of their account (A.R.E., para. 218; G.R.J., para. 183).

The consolidated case law of the ECtHR regarding the reversal of the burden of proof might serve as a compelling source of inspiration for the ECJ’s judges in this specific case, which bears significant similarities to the large number of expulsion cases the ECtHR has adjudicated, most recently in G.R.J.

The fact that this is an application for damages under Article 340(2) TFEU against an EU agency, rather than a human rights application before the ECtHR against a state, does not make a difference, as similar objectives are pursued. The judges might consider that the conditions to be met for being successful with claim for damages before the ECJ are significantly higher than a human rights application before the ECtHR. This applies particularly to the more extensive requirements for proving harm under the ECJ’s case law compared to the standards for establishing victim status under Strasbourg case law. In other words, and contrary to what Frontex appeared to imply during the hearing, the bar for establishing liability remains high and substantial.

Meet prima facie threshold

To meet the prima facie threshold under the ECtHR, regularly two key elements are required (a) an individual account which is specific, consistent, generally coherent, and credible and (b) general context evidence concerning the broader context relevant to applicants’ claims.  In G.R.J.  the ECtHR relied on such general context evidence: “[h]aving regard to the large number, diversity, and concordance of the relevant sources …the Court concludes that there is serious evidence to suggest that, at the time of the alleged events, there was a systematic practice of refoulement by the Greek authorities of third-country nationals from the Greek islands to Turkey.” G.R.J. , para. 190, unofficial translation. Contradictions in the respondent’s statements will be considered as well.

It appeared from the judges' questions during the hearing that the Court was indeed considering holding that the General Court had failed to consider shifting the burden of proof to the EU Agency. This is not surprising in view of its own well-established case law on the reversal of the burden of proof in similar cases of asymmetry of access to information, albeit in other areas (e.g., discrimination) and its approach to consider relevant case law of the ECtHR as a source of inspiration. In this regard, the Court has ample reasons to hold that the applicant has provided prima facie evidence of the violation and that the General Court should have considered shifting the burden of proof to Frontex.

The judges inquired about OLAF’s 2021 report on Frontex and its findings concerning the events of 28 and 29 April 2020. It mentioned the fact that the report refers to two Frontex officers confirming the credibility of the Bellingcat article admitting that the operation of which Mr. Hamoudi claims to be the victim of took place. In any event, if the case had been considered by the Strasbourg Court, it would have found that the specific and consistent account by Mr. Hamoudi, partially corroborated by OLAF’s findings and the Bellingcat article, constitutes prima facie evidence, thereby triggering a shift in the burden of proof.  The Court of Justice would be justified in following the Strasbourg case law and reaching this conclusion. This is also so because of the widely documented information on the general context and the myriad of contradictory statements about the events by Frontex outside the proceedings.

Refuting the appellant’s claims

Frontex stressed at the hearing that it could not “live up” to substantiating, refuting or corroborating the prima facie evidence of the appellant. It was in a situation of an impossible proof. This is wholly unconvincing. Frontex could simply review its records or surveillance footage to determine whether, at the relevant date and time, its surveillance aircrafts were operating over the area where the unlawful pushback of Mr. Hamoudi occurred. Frontex conducted two active operations in the region and is best placed to substantiate or refute the appellant’s claims. With an explicit to mandate to provide support to Greece in the Aegean Sea fully aware of Greece’s shady practices and under an explicit mandate to safeguard fundamental rights of individuals in distress at sea as per Article 80 (2) and 80 (3) of the Frontex Regulation it was monitoring the situation.

Conclusion

Enabling the EU Courts to focus on the legal assessment of alleged fundamental rights violations in such cases by providing as much factual information as possible serves the interests of all parties involved—including the Court itself.

Frontex has faced significant criticism over alleged pushback practices in the Aegean Sea, raising serious concerns about compliance with its fundamental rights obligations. It is in the Agency’s interest to be as transparent as possible, not to seek to win a litigation such as the Hamoudi case at all costs but to assist the court in reaching the correct result. By doing so, Frontex can contribute to reinforcing trust in the EU Agency’s commitment to human rights and accountability.

Wednesday, 26 February 2025

WS and Others v Frontex before the Grand Chamber: Ensuring Meaningful Protection of Fundamental Rights in Forced Returns by an EU Agency acting as a Safety-Net

 



Antje Kunst*

*Antje Kunst is an international lawyer and barrister of Garden Court North Chambers, admitted to the Bar of England and Wales, and the Bar of Berlin, advising and representing individuals in a wide range of matters related to fundamental rights within the CFSP and other fields. She has appeared in numerous cases before both the Court of Justice and the General Court, within the Court of Justice of the European Union.  

Photo credit:
Влада на Република Северна Македонија via Wikimedia Commons

 

Introduction

On 4 February 2025 the Grand Chamber held a hearing on the appeal in Case C-679/23 P against the General Court (GC)’s Judgment of 6 September 2023 in case WS and Others v. Frontex, Case T- 600/21. The case's high significance lies in the fact that the Court of Justice looks the first time at Frontex's liability in the context for illegal return operations. This article provides a brief summary of the case and comments on some of the issues discussed at the hearing. (For a summary of the arguments at the hearing, see here).

Despite high expectations by many regarding the Grand Chamber’s ruling in this case, the Court may only be asked to rule pursuant to Article 256 TFEU and Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice on whether the GC committed an error of law. Thus, the judicial review might be limited in this respect.

Given the issues discussed at the hearing, it is expected that the Court of Justice will clarify Frontex’s obligations in joint return operations based on the circumstances of the individual case on appeal. Whether it will extend its reasoning beyond this case remains to be seen. It would certainly be desirable if the Court elaborated on Frontex's own fundamental rights obligations, which are distinct from Member States' obligations, also to counter the tendency of the Agency to negate its own obligations, as was noticeable at the hearing. One can certainly expect that Advocate General Ćapeta will offer interesting insights in her Opinion, which she is set to deliver in June 2025.

As a factual background the applicants, a Syrian Kurdish refugee family with four children, arrived on the Greek island of Milos in October 2016 by boat with the intention of claiming asylum. Even though they made their intention clear to apply for asylum just six days later, they were deported by flight to Turkey in a joint return operation conducted by Greece and Frontex. Because of the fear of being returned to Syria by the Turkish authorities (para. 59 of the GC’s judgment), the family decided not to stay in Turkey but to proceed to Iraq, where they reside to this day.

The applicants filed a claim for compensation, alleging that Frontex had violated its obligations under the then-applicable Frontex Regulation (the 2016 Frontex Regulation) and several fundamental rights during the return operation. Specifically, they claimed Frontex failed to comply with its obligations related, inter alia, to the principle of non-refoulement, the right to asylum and the prohibition of collective expulsion.

Admissibility of the action: Article 340.2 TFEU

Any arguable claim that fundamental rights have been violated should be subject to an effective judicial remedy, and that is in these types of cases a claim for compensation under Article 340.2 TFEU (see  more here). Despite Frontex’s arguments, the GC rightly deemed the claim admissible, which some view as a significant success in itself, as it sets a precedent for the admissibility of similar actions.

The GC’s (implicit) conclusion regarding Frontex’s verification duties

The GC dismissed the action finding that Frontex's role in joint return operations was to provide technical and operational support to EU Member States and not to enter the merits of return decisions or decide on applications for asylum (paras. 64 and 65 of the GC’s judgment). 

The GC’s holding that Frontex cannot assess the merits of return decisions or decide on asylum applications is beside the point. By failing to distinguish between a return decision and its implementation, the GC ignored Frontex’s role in the implementation of return decisions. The implementation of returns clearly falls within Frontex’s competence, and this was precisely what the appellants were challenging before the GC. That is why the GC’s findings in this regard constitute an error in law as pleaded by the appellants (see the appeal).

An EU Agency implementing member states’ return decisions

The 2016 Frontex Regulation requires the EU agency to provide necessary assistance and coordinate or organize joint return operations together with member states. With this role come specific responsibilities, which arise undoubtedly not only after a joint return operation, but also before and during such an operation, especially in monitoring and ensuring that individuals like the Syrian refugee family in question are protected from fundamental rights violations.

The 2016 Frontex Regulation specifically requires the agency to ensure respect for fundamental rights, including the principle of non-refoulement, throughout the operation. Its monitoring role in relation to return operations is outlined in Article 28(7) of the 2016 Frontex Regulation, which obligates Frontex to report any fundamental rights concerns to the participating Member States. Additionally, Article 34(2) states that Frontex must ensure no person is returned to a country where they could face refoulement. As an EU agency, it must follow the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The EU Return Directive further sets out rules on enforcing return decisions, including postponing a return if there is a risk of refoulement.

Independent verification duties to ensure protection of fundamental rights

From the questions asked it appears that the Court will take the view – quite correctly - that Frontex is, at a minimum, under an obligation to check if it is assisting, organising or coordinating the return of actual returnees, i.e. persons who are subject to written return decisions. It cannot simply trust the national authorities and turn a blind eye to who is on the returnees list.

In its own submissions at the hearing, Frontex acknowledged a duty to verify cases where the national documentation, including written return decisions, contains a logical or a manifest error.

The absence of enforceable return decisions in this case is not disputed by Frontex. In this respect, Frontex failed to check the relevant national paperwork. A Syrian-Kurdish family was returned where they came from, Turkey, despite having expressed their intention to seek asylum in Greece - a fact that a proper verification of the national paperwork would have likely revealed.

Frontex should have identified a clear error on the returnees list, as there were sufficient indications that the Syrian-Kurdish family, including four children, had been wrongly included. The presence of this family on the return flight—after arriving in Greece by boat and being scheduled for return a few days thereafter to Southeast Turkey without apparently having filed an asylum claim—should have raised concerns or suspicion about their possible wrongful inclusion on the list of returnees.

Regarding the risk of refoulement, the GC acknowledged that the appellants feared "being returned to Syria by the Turkish authorities" (para. 68 of the GC’s judgment). In this context, the GC failed to rule that Frontex is obligated to assess whether individuals like the Syrian-Kurdish family risk being transferred to a third country where they may face refoulement or violations of their fundamental rights. Frontex has a duty to prevent any form of refoulement in line with its own fundamental rights obligations as clearly set out in the Frontex Regulation. 

The GC failed to rule that Frontex could and should have enquired, for example by contacting the Greek authorities why this family was on the return flight to Turkey and whether their placement on the list was justified. The Agency’s failure to do so constitutes an unlawful act which the GC failed to establish.

Frontex submitted at the hearing that a few years after the events in question, a new IT tool was introduced by Frontex, requiring Member States to confirm several key conditions before a return operation can proceed. These conditions include: (a) the existence of an individual implementable final return decision, (b) the exhaustion of all judicial remedies, (c) confirmation that the returnee has not applied for asylum. To fulfil in a meaningful way its fundamental rights obligations, Frontex must actively verify this information or, at the very least, implement robust mechanisms to ensure that these criteria are met before facilitating or participating in return operations. It failed to do so in the present case.

Consequently, the GC’s conclusion that Frontex had no obligations regarding the return flight of the family to verify, to the very least, whether the return operation involved actual returnees (see the appeal) constitutes an error of law.

Sufficiently direct causal link

The GC concluded that Frontex could not be held liable for any damages related to the return operation, as the appellants had not adduced evidence of a sufficiently direct causal link between the damage invoked and the alleged conduct of Frontex (para.71 of the GC’s judgment).

The appellants correctly contended that if Frontex had fulfilled its obligations regarding the protection of fundamental rights in the context of joint operations, they would not have been unlawfully returned to Turkey. Instead, they would have obtained the international protection to which they were entitled, given their Syrian nationality and the situation in Syria at the time.

In the appeal, the appellants argued that the GC erred in law by concluding that the necessary causal link between Frontex’s actions and omissions and the harm suffered was broken by the appellants’ own "choices." In this regard it is not arguable that it was their choice to stay in Turkey in a rented house for some time, and then to abandon it and go to Iraq. On the contrary the damage they suffered was a direct result of Frontex’s failures. If the Agency had properly checked the relevant material the appellants would not have been wrongful returned to Turkey and incurred the harm they suffered.

The appellants contend that the harm they suffered was a foreseeable result of Frontex’s failure to fulfil its obligations to uphold fundamental rights during return operations and to prevent individuals from being disembarked in violation of the non-refoulement principle. At the hearing, the question was raised as to whether it was foreseeable that the family, out of fear, would not remain in South-East Turkey but instead flee to Iraq. It has been convincingly argued here  ‘it appears evident that people forcibly expelled to Turkey in 2016 could have suffered chain (i.e., indirect) refoulement to their countries of origin.’  In this case, the damage related to Iraq did not result from an unpredictable intervening event; rather, it was arguably reasonably foreseeable that the Syrian-Kurdish family out of fear to be sent back to Syria by the Turkish authorities would flee to Iraq. If the Court agrees with this, the damage related to Iraq was a direct and foreseeable consequence of Frontex’s unlawful conduct and the GC erred in law by failing to establish this.

Conclusion

The Grand Chamber’s ruling will be highly significant in defining Frontex’s role in protecting fundamental rights during return operations. Judicial scrutiny will enhance accountability and drive further reform, even if the Court must limit its ruling to the specific circumstances of this case. Both member states and Frontex have important obligations to meet when they conduct joint return operations. In this respect, as Eleanor Sharpston, Counsel for the appellants, stated in her concluding remarks: Frontex provides “a safety net that, […] preserves the honour of the European Union as an entity that values and respects the rule of law and fundamental rights.”

 

Monday, 24 February 2025

The Italy/Albania asylum treaty reaches the CJEU: what are the issues?


 


Professor Steve Peers, Royal Holloway University of London

Photo credit: Pudelek, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Is the Italy/Albania deal on housing asylum-seekers a model of the future, to be emulated by the rest of the EU, and the UK – or is it destined to be an expensive failure, like the UK’s Rwanda policy? The fate of the treaty may rest on its compatibility with EU law, and tomorrow’s hearing at the CJEU – in which it is asked to answer several questions from an Italian court on this point – will be the first time that the EU court will have the opportunity to address some of the issues arising from the treaty directly.  What are the issues that the court will address? How might it address them? And what are the possible implications going forward?

Background

As explained in the summary of the national court’s proceedings, the Italy/Albania deal entails moving to Albania some of the asylum-seekers whom Italy at first sight believes to come from ‘safe countries of origin’. The asylum-seekers stay in Albania while their claim for asylum is processed by Italy, applying Italian law – including EU law, which defines the ‘safe countries of origin’ concept. If they win their cases, they are accepted into Italy; if they lose, Italy attempts to remove them.

The CJEU has only given one prior ruling on the substance of the ‘safe country of origin’ concept – its ruling last October on the Czech government’s designation of part of Moldova as ‘safe’. In my discussion of that judgment I summarised the rules on ‘safe country of origin’ in the original 2005 asylum procedures directive, the 2013 asylum procedures Directive (which currently applies to asylum applications), and the 2024 asylum procedures Regulation, which forms part of the recent asylum pact (which will first apply to applications made from July 2026). The definition of ‘safe country of origin’ is more fully laid out there; this blog post focusses on the specific issues directly relevant to the challenges to the Italy/Albania treaty. (It should be noted, though, that the designation creates a rebuttable presumption of safety, which the asylum-seeker can challenge in their particular circumstances; but the application may be fast-tracked and the suspensive effect of an appeal may be limited).  

In the October judgment, the court ruled that it breached EU law to designate part of Moldova as a ‘safe country of origin’, because the current 2013 procedures Directive – unlike the previous Directive or the Regulation applying in future – does not provide for only part of a country to be designated as ‘safe’. The judgment also clarified some elements of the substance of designating a country as ‘safe’ (namely, whether the supposedly ‘safe’ country invoking a derogation from the ECHR always prevented such a designation; the court ruled that it did not, that derogation only being a factor to consider), and on the procedure of challenging such designations in a national court.

Although the October judgment did not directly concern the Italy/Albania treaty, it had an indirect impact on that treaty, which was coincidentally about to be implemented for the first time in practice. Because of the CJEU judgment, Italian courts ruled against detaining asylum seekers in Albania, because Italian law, like Czech law, had also designated some non-EU countries as ‘safe countries of origin’ in part only. Attempting to save the policy, the Italian government adopted a new list of ‘safe countries of origin’, now eschewing the partial designation of any countries. But this list was challenged in turn, and multiple Italian courts have prevented further detentions in Albania, sending a number of questions to the CJEU about the interpretation of other aspects of the ‘safe country of origin’ rules in EU law. In the meantime, the Albanian detention centres, built at great cost to the Italian taxpayer, lie empty except for sheltering stray dogs – to the fury of the Italian government and a confused Elon Musk. But might the doggos nevertheless someday have to make way for human detainees after all?  

The cases before the CJEU

Among a number of cases sent from the Italian courts, the CJEU chose to fast-track two: the ‘Alace’ and ‘Canpelli’ cases. These are fake names invented by the court (applying its usual policy): the former is from Bangladesh, but ‘Alace’ is probably the least Bengali name ever; while the latter sounds like a posh brand of pasta. Presumably the Court’s judgment in these cases will be relevant to answering the questions in the other pending cases (see, for instance, Ortera, Mibone, Capurteli and Leusi), and more broadly determining if the Italy/Albania treaty can still be implemented, and if so, whether any limits may apply.

There are four questions for the Court to answer in Alace and Canpelli. First, does EU law preclude a national legislature from designating a country as a ‘safe country of origin’ itself? Secondly, does EU law require the sources taken into account when designating a country as ‘safe’ to be ‘accessible and verifiable’, as not doing so may complicate a legal challenge to the designation? Thirdly, can the courts use information from sources other than those referred to in the directive (namely ‘other Member States, [the EU asylum agency], UNHCR, the Council of Europe and other relevant international organisations’), when reviewing the designation of ‘safety’? Finally, can a Member State designate a country as ‘safe’ where there are groups of people who are not safe there (for instance, LGBT asylum-seekers, who are specifically mentioned in some of the other Italian court references to the CJEU)?

We can never be absolutely certain how a court will rule, but my answers to those questions (I’m not predicting that the CJEU will agree) would be as follows: there’s nothing in the Directive to prevent a national legislature from designating a ‘safe country of origin’; the sources used when making the designation must be public, to ensure effective judicial review; the list of sources which can be used to make the designation are non-exhaustive (‘including in particular’), so it should follow by analogy that the courts can also use other sources for judicial review of the designation; and under the current law, a country of origin must be safe for everyone before it can be designated as such. The latter should follow by analogy from the Court’s previous judgment on listing part of a country as ‘safe country of origin’, which took account of the legislative history: the prospect of designating a country of origin as ‘safe’ in part was explicitly provided for in the previous Directive and the Regulation applying in future, but not in the current procedures Directive, which suggested that its omission from the current law was deliberate. Likewise the prospect of designating a country of origin as ‘safe’ for some groups was also explicitly provided for in the previous Directive and the Regulation applying in future, but not in the current procedures Directive.

Impact of the future judgment

We can’t fully assess the impact of a future judgment before it is handed down. But while it is possible that the future judgment may criticise aspects of how Italy applies the ‘safe country of origin’ rule, it might still nevertheless be possible for Italy to correct those errors and still apply at least some amended version of the rule to asylum seekers that it wishes to remove to Albania during the processing of their claims. If necessary, the EU might decide to consider bringing forward the application of parts of the future Regulation, or quickly using its power to pass an emergency asylum law.

There might, of course, be further challenges to any amended Italian law, or to EU law itself. For instance, any attempt to provide in EU law that national designations of ‘safe country of origin’ cannot be judicially reviewed, or to provide for hurdles limiting such judicial review, would arguably be invalid as a breach of Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which provides for the right to an effective remedy.

So there’s a decent probability that some form of Italy/Albania treaty will be applied in practice – albeit perhaps not as widely as the Italian government hopes. A more significant barrier to the proliferation of such treaties in future may be the reluctance of non-EU countries to agree to them (cf, in a different context, the CJEU judgment ruling that Turkey’s refusal to readmit asylum seekers prevented Greece from deciding that asylum applications made by the asylum seekers in question are inadmissible on the grounds that Turkey is a ‘safe third country’), or at least the limited capacity of such countries (cf Rwanda’s capacity to take only a small proportion of those crossing to the UK on ‘small boats’).