In March 2023, the Refugee Appeals Board upheld the Danish Immigration Service’s decision to transfer to Croatia a man who has lodged an application for asylum there and then left Croatia before his asylum case was completed. The Board observed that, prior to a transfer of the complainant to Croatia, the Immigration Service should obtain a guarantee from the Croatian authorities that the complainants’ case would be admissible in Croatia in accordance with its EU law and other international obligations if a transfer from Croatia to another Member State under the Dublin III Regulation does not take place.

The complainant had argued that his asylum case should be dealt with in Denmark on the basis of the general conditions of asylum seekers in Croatia.

The Board also noted that Croatia agreed to take back the complainant and with regard to the reception conditions of asylum applicants in Croatia, the Board considered that there were no grounds to believe that there were such general systemic flaws that a Dublin transfer would result in a risk of inhuman and degrading treatment as defined in Article 4 of the EU Charter. The Board referred to AIDA’s ‘Country Report: Croatia, 2021 Update", published in April 2022, showing that Dublin returnees do not face challenges in accessing reception centers when they have not previously been refused asylum in Croatia.

As regards the asylum procedure in Croatia, the Board noted that, according to the background information available to it, it had certain shortcomings observed in the ECtHR findings that Croatia used pushbacks to deny access to the asylum procedure at its borders as well as the use of disproportionate force by the authorities at the border (M.H. and Others v Croatia,15670/18 and 43115/18).