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In an eagerly awaited ruling judges at the ECJ confirmed that Austria and Slovenia can send migrants back to Croatia to have their asylum cases determined there instead. The case came before the court after Croatian authorities infuriated their neighbours at the height of the 2015 crisis by laying on state-funded transport to help migrants cross their territory.

GETTY Croatia struggled to cope with large numbers of migrants in 2015

Officials in Zagreb had argued that they were dealing with an unprecedented situation as hundreds of thousands of migrants moved northwards towards Germany, and that this exempted them from the need to process visas. But Austria and Slovenia, where some of the asylum seekers ended up, brought legal proceedings saying that Croatia had a duty to decide on asylum cases, and not simply bus people northwards, under the Dublin Convention.

GETTY The European Court of Justice upheld the Dublin Regulation today

The landmark EU migration law, first agreed in 1990, specifically states that it is the responsibility of the first EU member state a migrant enters to determine their case. Today’s ruling could have a significant impact on the future of the EU’s rapidly sinking migrant quota scheme, under which all countries have been allocated a mandatory number of refugees to take in from Greece and Italy. Both of the countries bringing the lawsuit have strongly opposed the enforced system and refused to take part, drawing a furious response from Rome which is struggling to cope with huge numbers of new arrivals. And whilst today's case was focussed on Croatia, the ruling theoretically strips Italy and Greece of similar legal arguments against having to take migrants back under the Dublin system. The specifics of the case focus on one Syrian national, who applied for asylum in Slovenia, and two Afghan family members who travelled to Austria - all after being helped to transit through Croatia. In both instances the two countries’ national courts ruled that the trio should be returned to Croatia to apply for asylum there - prompting a legal challenge from the individuals which ended up at the ECJ.

The crossing of a border in breach of the conditions imposed by the rules must necessarily be considered irregular ECJ ruling

They argued that their entry into Croatia in 2015 could not be considered “irregular” - in other words illegal - because the national authorities knew they were there and provided them with onwards transport. The trio tried to claim that this was in a legal sense tantamount to the Croatian government giving them a visa - but in its ruling today the ECJ judges struck that argument down. They concluded: “The admission of a national from a non-EU country to the territory of a Member State is not tantamount to the issuing of a visa, even if the admission is explained by exceptional circumstances characterised by a mass influx of displaced people into the EU. “The crossing of a border in breach of the conditions imposed by the rules applicable in the Member State concerned must necessarily be considered ‘irregular’. “A Member State which has decided on humanitarian grounds to authorise the entry on its territory of a non-EU national who does not have a visa and is not entitled to waiver of a visa cannot be absolved of that responsibility [to process their asylum claim].” The court ruled that the fact Croatia was facing an influx of so many people was “not decisive” and that allowing people to enter its territory on humanitarian grounds was its decision, so that “such authorisation is valid only in respect of the territory of the Member State concerned, not the territory of the other Member States”.

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