The case concerned Syrian asylum applicants belonging to the same family and whose asylum applications were left unexamined by the Finnish Immigration Service because it was considered that Denmark was the Member State responsible to process the application, based on the Dublin III Regulation.

In addition, the applicants submitted an individual complaint before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Children, which asked Finland to refrain from implementing the transfer to Denmark as long as the individual appeal of the parties was pending before the committee.

Thus, the Finnish Immigration Service notified Denmark of the postponement of the transfer.

On appeal, the administrative court considered that there was no reason not to enforce the transfer and referred the case back to the Finnish Immigration Service because the six months deadline for the transfer has expired and thus the responsibility for examining the application had passed to Finland.

The Finnish Immigration Service appealed against this lower court decision and the Supreme Administrative Court had to decide, whether the request of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child for non-implementation of the transfer had the effect of postponing the start of the transfer deadline under the Dublin III Regulation. 

The Supreme Administrative Court considered that according to Article 11 of the Optional Protocol on the Complaints Procedure of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the opinions of the Committee on the Rights of the Child are not binding under international law, but the contracting state must take them into account. The Supreme Administrative Court stated that although the provisional measures proposed by the Committee do not therefore automatically cause a postponement or other interruption of the implementation of the national decision on a Dublin transfer, they must duly take it into account, together with other facts and circumstances of the case, when considering the need to cancel its implementation.

The Supreme Administrative Court noted that the request addressed to Finland by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to refrain from removing the parties involved has been connected to an individual complaint and in such a procedure, there is no question of an appeal against the transfer decision before a national court because the issue is an investigation by an international investigative body regarding whether Finland has violated the rights recognised in the Convention on the Rights of the Child for the parties involved.

Therefore, the Supreme Administrative Court stated that the suspensive effect of the appeal on the deadline for the Dublin transfer, is specifically related to the appeal against the transfer decision referred to in Article 27, Paragraph 1 or 3 of the Dublin III Regulation. The Supreme Administrative Court therefore considered that an individual complaint or a temporary measure issued as a result of a complaint submitted before an UN body cannot be considered as an appeal against the transfer decision. The Supreme Administrative Court ruled that only an appeal against the decision of the transfer has a suspensive effect, as meant by the Dublin III Regulation.

The Supreme Administrative Court referred to the CJEU judgments in Migrationsverket v Edgar Petrosian and Others, C‑19/08, 29 January 2009, Mohammad Khir Amayry v Migration Board, Sweden (Migrationsverket), C-60/16, 13 September 2017 and E.N., S.S., J.Y. v State Secretary for Justice and Security (Staatssecretaris van Justitie en Veiligheid), C‑556/21, 30 March 2023. 

The Supreme Administrative Court rejected the appeal of the Finnish Immigration Service and confirmed the administrative court decision.