Broken promises (about Dublin transfer from the Netherlands) given to the ECtHR.

Application no. 5734/25

A.K. v. the Netherlands and Poland

On April 4, 2025 a Polish Border Guard attempted to deport to the country of origin a Tajik citizen, who had been transferred a day before from the Netherlands after Poland had promised to the European Court of Human Rights that he would not be deported.

According to the submission of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the ECtHR (A.K. v. the Netherlands and Poland, Application no. 5734/25) sent on March 25, 2025, the asylum seeker from Tajikistan whose extradition from Poland was not allowed by the Polish Supreme Court would be able to stay in Poland until the end of his return procedure and that he would be allowed to submit a new application for international protection.

In fact, after being transferred under Dublin III Regulation to Warsaw, A.K. was denied the possibility of filing for international protection, nor was he granted a tolerated stay. Instead, the Border Guard informed him that he would be deported.

The Rule of Law Institute was informed at 9:30 am about the return operation to Tajikistan from Warsaw airport which was due to start at 12:55 pm and raised concerns about its legality (according to law the monitoring institutions must be informed 7 days before the operation and in extremely urgent cases not less than 24 hours before). Despite the fact that there were just a couple of hours to the flight, the Rule of Law Institute asked for flight details to be able to monitor the special operation.

Our intervention might have helped to stop the illegal return, and the Rule of Law Institute had been informed about the cancelation of the operation due to “overbooking”. Instead of immediate deportation A.K. had been placed in the detention center. He told us on Saturday that he had been warned that he was going to be deported by the military plane anyway.

This case shows what is the value of the words of the Polish state and the guarantees made to the foreigners in return procedures. The Rule of Law Institute is frequently advocating for introducing a state funded legal aid to foreigners in deportation procedures which is a duty of the state based on art. 13.4 Directive 2008/115. We are alarmed at the elimination of the suspensive effect during the time of awaiting judicial review of return decisions. Finally, in our opinion the return monitoring system is a façade (the state does not want that to be undertaken so there is no funding of this important activity).

All these systemic flaws had been also confirmed by the Schengen evaluation of Poland which was carried out in March - April 2024.

The report includes a prioritized recommendation to amend the national law to ensure that third-country nationals are afforded an effective remedy to appeal against or seek review of decisions related to return, in accordance with Article 13 of Directive 2008/115/EC. It also reflects other RLI concerns related to lack of safeguards (“In addition to the improvements needed to respect the principle of non-refoulement, other challenges in the area of return are closely tied to safeguards throughout the return process, including access to legal aid and effective remedies to appeal return-related decisions and the monitoring system for forced returns which also faces significant shortcomings).

The Rule of Law Institute has no doubt that a great number of serious incidents observed in recent months is strengthening our argument that Dublin transfers of asylum seekers to Poland should be suspended.

The words of a Polish state are not worth the paper they are written on!

In order to read the full intervetnion in Polish... Click HERE