In the context of an urgent appeal against a decision to be returned to the border following a transfer decision for a Turkish national, the Council for Alien Law Litigation clarified the scope of the language regime set out in Article 51/4, § 1 of the Aliens Act of 15 December 1980. The article provides that the examination of the application for international protection takes place in French or Dutch and that the language of the examination is also that of the decision to which it gives rise as well as any subsequent decisions to remove from the territory.

The Council ruled that the scope of the linguistic regime is limited to ‘the examination of the application for international protection’. It also noted that the contested decision has the effect of returning the person concerned to the border and was taken as part of a procedure aimed to determine the responsible Member State to analyse an application for international protection.

The Council noted that Article 51/4 of the Aliens Act does not apply to decisions aimed at determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection, nor to decisions to transfer the person to the Member State responsible for examining the application for international protection, as these decisions precede the examination of the application for international protection and cannot therefore be considered as subsequent decisions within the meaning of article 51/4 §1, second paragraph of the Aliens Act.