A Turkish national applied for international protection in the Netherlands. The State Secretary found, through a Eurodac hit, that the applicant had been registered when irregularly entering the territory of the Member States via Croatia. The State Secretary therefore sent a take charge request to Croatia, which the Croatian authorities accepted. The State Secretary then dismissed his application for international protection and decided to transfer the applicant to Croatia.

The applicant appealed the decision to the District Court of the Hague and claimed that there were concrete indications that Croatia was failing to comply with its international obligations, that there were various reports and articles which showed that there were human rights violations, pushbacks and police violence in Croatia. Therefore, according to the applicant, the principle of mutual trust could not be relied upon in regard to Croatia and the State Secretary should therefore apply Article 17 of the Dublin III Regulation.

The State Secretary argued that the applicant did not run a real risk of violation of Article 3 of the ECHR and Article 4 of the EU Charter. It had conducted investigations in response to previous judgments from the court from 5 April 2022. The Croatian authorities have answered questions from the State Secretary in November 2022, ensuring that Croatia complies with its international obligations with regard to Dublin transferees. It noted that the European Commission has also concluded that Croatia fulfils the conditions for the application of the Schengen acquis, that Croatia has committed to a zero-tolerance policy towards violence at the border and that the Member State addresses previous abuses at the border and monitors the situation through an independent monitoring mechanism. The State Secretary did not dispute the information submitted in the proceedings, but took the view that it did not follow that the pushbacks also took place for Dublin transferees arriving in Croatia. According to the State Secretary, the principle of mutual trust could be invoked with regard to Croatia.

The court made reference to reports and articles from, among others from the Border Violence Monitoring Network, Lighthouse Reports and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, which contained testimonies of migrants on pushbacks and ill-treatment by the Croatian authorities.

In light of the reports, the District Court of the Hague seated in Amsterdam determined that the State Secretary could not claim in full and without further reasoning that the principle of mutual trust could be relied upon. The court noted that the cited articles and reports showed that pushbacks did not only take place at the borders, but also among migrants who were in the border area or further into the territory of Croatia. The fact that the articles and reports did not explicitly state that those migrants were Dublin transferees did not mean that they were not, or that Dublin transferees would not be at risk. Conversely, it could not be concluded from the State Secretary’s information that every Dublin claimant in Croatia was assured treatment in accordance with the provisions of the EU Charter, the Refugee Convention and the ECHR. The court added that the absence of specific and concrete information on Dublin transferees could be at the expense and risk of the applicant.

The District Court of the Hague therefore determined that the State Secretary should have carried out further investigations into Croatia's compliance with treaty obligations in practice. The court decided to annul the transfer decision and returned the case to the State Secretary for a new decision in accordance with the court’s judgment.