The applicant, RAB, from Nigeria, challenged a decision of the Czech Ministry of the Interior which held that France was responsible for examining the asylum application pursuant to Article 3 of the Dublin III Regulation and rejected as inadmissible the applicant’s request. The Ministry decided to reject the application after the Regional Court in Brno, by judgment of 9 February 2022 (case no 34 Az 27/2021-36), annulled the Ministry’s previous decision on the applicant’s application for international protection as it had not sufficiently addressed the difficulties related to the insufficient capacity of accommodation centres in France and the possible impact of those systemic problems on the applicant in the event of his transfer to France. The present case thus concerns whether the Ministry rectified its errors and whether Article 17 of the Dublin III Regulation is correctly applied.

The applicant had arrived in France in 2021 on a visa to attend an agricultural exhibition and from there he left to Brno, where he applied for international protection due to fear of being kidnapped and killed in Nigeria, as he was a farmer. In the Czech Republic he worked in a bakery and lived with his girlfriend.

The Regional Court dismissed the action as unfounded and confirmed the contested decision of the Ministry of the Interior, as it considered that it did not include the deficiencies alleged by the applicant.

The court noted that the ministry complied with its obligation to collect relevant supporting documents on the receiving Member State and that the information used was developed in line with the European Asylum Support Office standards, with numerous references to the sources of information on which it based its findings.

As regards the accommodation of asylum applicants in France, the ministry admitted that there were deficiencies in the accommodation capacity. However, in the case of an applicant who was a single, young and healthy man, it considered that the probability of his accommodation in one of the accommodation centres for asylum applicants was low due to lack of accommodation (although it was not excluded). The court did not find a risk of exceeding the threshold of seriousness of systemic deficiencies in the asylum procedure in France, in agreement with the decisions of the ministry.

The court took into consideration the fact that the applicant was a young and healthy man who had no maintenance obligations in the Czech Republic, who stayed in France based on a visa for a short time and had no negative experience with the asylum procedure or residence in France. He traveled to the Czech Republic only on the basis of the recommendation of a random acquaintance from the metro. The court considered that he was completely self-sufficient and independent, very good at orienting himself in a foreign environment, as he did in the Czech Republic, where he did not use accommodation intended for asylum applicants but he found accommodation and work in private.

As regards the length of the procedure for an application for international protection in France, the information used by the court showed that in 2019, the average time of the decision on international protection was 161 days, in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic the average increased to 262 days. The court considered that overall the obligation to take a decision within 6 months was in principle respected.

The court noted that despite long-term shortcomings in the accommodation capacity in France, there was no risk of treatment contrary to Article 3 of the Convention and Article 4 of the EU Charter with regard to the applicant and other guarantees which would have to lead to the application of Article 3(2) of the Dublin III Regulation.

The court further noted that the ministry indicated the situations in which the application of Article 17 of the Dublin III Regulation came into consideration (humanitarian reasons, family reasons, cultural grounds), explaining in a comprehensible and reviewable manner why those reasons were not applied for the applicant. It further noted that the applicant had no relatives in the Czech Republic within the meaning of Article 2(h) of the Dublin III Regulation, as the applicant’s relationship could not be considered permanent and long-term only based on the fact that the couple shared accommodation since February 2022.

The judgment is not final, as an appeal on points of law may be lodged against it.