ReliefWeb

Executive Summary

In 2016 the Danish Refugee Council and the Swiss Refugee Council started a joint monitoring project, documenting the experiences of asylum seekers transferred to Italy under the Dublin III Regulation. Following the first monitoring report from February 2017, which documented the situation of six families with minor children, this second report documents the situation of 13 vulnerable individuals and families transferred to Italy from other European countries.

The 13 case studies show that it is arbitrary how vulnerable asylum seekers transferred to Italy are received upon arrival, despite the guarantees provided by the Italian authorities following the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Tarakhel v. Switzerland.

By monitoring the situation of 13 vulnerable Dublin returnees, the Danish Refugee Council and the Swiss Refugee Council document how some are denied access to the Italian reception system upon arrival altogether or must wait a long time before they are accommodated, which significantly hinders their effective access to the Italian asylum procedure.

The experiences of the participating asylum seekers show that after accessing reception conditions, which are often far from adequate to meet their special reception needs, vulnerable Dublin returnees risk losing the right to accommodation without due consideration of their vulnerable situation.

Following the cases documented through the monitoring project, the Danish Refugee Council and the Swiss Refugee Council find that it is clear, that there is a real risk of vulnerable Dublin returnees not being provided with adequate reception conditions upon arrival in Italy, exposing them to a risk of ill-treatment contrary to Article 3 of the ECHR and Article 4 of the EU Charter of fundamental rights.

The risk that the fundamental rights of Dublin returnees will be violated upon return to Italy has only increased following the changes to the Italian reception system introduced by the Salvini Decree, which entered into force on 5 October 2018 and which significantly affect the Italian reception system for the worse.

Finally, the experiences of the monitored vulnerable Dublin returnees emphasize that Member States must abide by their obligations under the Dublin III Regulation to ensure that the special needs of Dublin returnees are adequately addressed following a Dublin transfer to the responsible Member State. As illustrated by the case studies in this report, those responsible for addressing the special needs of vulnerable Dublin returnees often seem to be unaware of these, in spite of the transferring Member States’ obligations under Articles 31 and 32 of the Dublin III Regulation to transmit information on any special needs of the person to be transferred.