A Tunisian national appealed before the Tribunal of Florence against the negative decision on his application for international protection. The applicant claimed that the competent Territorial Commission did not give due consideration to the socio-economical, health and water crisis in Tunisia. In particular, the applicant argued that the authoritarian regression and the political crisis are such as to render obsolete the assessment carried out for the purposes of  the Ministerial Decree of 17 March 2023 and contested that Tunisia was included in the national list of safe countries of origin. The applicant has not referred to any grounds related to his person but mentioned only the general conditions in his country of origin.  

The Tribunal of Florence noted that according to the Legislative Decree 25 of 4 October 2018 Article 2 bis on “safe countries of origin”, the inclusion of a country in the national list creates a presumption of  security in the country of origin listed there in and which concerns the application for asylum and that in order to rebut that presumption an applicant must invoke serious reasons to demonstrate that the country is not safe for the particular situation in which the applicant finds himself.

In the present case the applicant has not adduced any evidence related to his particular situation, however the tribunal stated that the judicial authority has the duty to verify the correctness of inclusion of a country on the list of safe countries, even if the indication made at administrative level meets the criteria set by law. 

The tribunal highlighted that the administrative decision on an application for international protection may be taken with a priority under the  accelerated procedure, when the applicant failed to demonstrate that there are serious reasons to consider the country of origin as “unsafe” due to personal circumstances related to the applicant’s situation. The derogation from Article 11(2) of the recast APD provides that Member States must accompany a negative decision with de iure and de facto reasons. This derogation is addressed only to the administrative decision making body but it does not exempt the judge from the general obligation to verify all elements of the case and state reasons regarding to findings on the security situation in the country of origin, with regard to risks for the individual applicant and with regard to the existence of indiscriminate violence caused by internal or international conflict.

The tribunal reiterated that the accelerated procedure provides for derogations from the rights explicitly described by the EU legislation as extrinsic from the principle of effective judicial protection: first, the right to ‘reasonable’ time-limits which ‘do not make access to justice impossible or excessively difficult’ (see Article 46(4) of the recast APD); secondly, the applicant’s right to remain in the territory ‘until the expiry of the period within which they may exercise their right to an effective remedy or, if that right has been exercised within the prescribed period, pending the outcome of the appeal’ (Article 46(6) of the recast APD).

By referring to the CJEU judgment of 20 October 2016, Evelyn Danqua v Minister for Justice and Equality, Ireland, Case C-429/15, the tribunal reiterated that ‘the principle of effectiveness must be interpreted as precluding a national procedural rule, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, which makes an application for subsidiary protection status subject to a limitation period of 15 working days following notification by the competent authority of the possibility for an asylum applicant whose application has been rejected to lodge such an application’.

The tribunal noted that the European legislator, gives the option to Member States to create a list of safe countries, in view of avoiding an abuse of the right to apply for international protection, and the list is being drawn  based on qualified sources provided by Member States, UNHCR, EUAA, the Council of Europe and other relevant international organisations. The sources have to be consulted with a view examining  Tunisia’s current security conditions by the most up-to-date qualified sources in order to verify whether there has been a change in the factual situation leading to a ‘significant change in the human rights situation’

By analysing information on security situation in Tunisia as updated on 28 October 2022 and included in the Ministerial Decree of 17 March 2023, the tribunal found that the administrative body (or determining authority) partially assessed some of the socio-political crisis events mentioned by the applicant and however it did not exclude the country for the national list of safe countries of origin.  

The tribunal reconsidered the presumption of safety in Tunisia based on according to up-to-date COI sources and the report of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe on the conclusion of a Memorandum of Understanding between the European Union and Tunisia, substantiating the increasing socio-political crisis in the country and a significant change in the human rights situation in a country designated as safe. According to Article 3 of Legislative Decree 251/2007 and articles 8 and 27(1-bis) of Legislative Decree 25/2008, the tribunal has the duty to examine the application on an individual basis in the light of precise and updated information on country of origin. As a consequence, the Tribunal concluded that the Ministerial Decree of 17 March 2023 must be disapplied since it does not comply with the legislative criteria set in Directive 2013/32/EU and suspended the negative decision of the Territorial Commission.

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