NCADC Campaigning Toolkit
Not everyone has the right for their asylum claim to be heard in the UK. If you are an adult and you claim asylum in the UK, and UKBA determines that you have travelled through a safe country on your journey to the UK, they will say that you have to return to that safe country (the ‘third country’) to have your asylum claim heard.
In practice, this is only enforced for people who have travelled through countries that are member states of the European Union, as deportation is allowed under a European agreement called the Dublin Regulations.
The Dublin regulations establish:
the principle that only one [European Union] Member State is responsible for examining an asylum application. The objective is to avoid asylum seekers from being sent from one country to another, and also to prevent abuse of the system by the submission of several applications for asylum by one person.
In July 2013, the Dublin III Regulations came into force. There are some new provisions - not in the previous (Dublin II) regulations) which can be seen as positive developments for asylum seekers, but their impact in practice is not yet known. Read more here.
If UKBA can prove (often using the Eurodac European-wide database of fingerprints) that you have travelled through another European Union country, they will not consider your asylum claim, and will remove you to the country that they can prove you travelled through and where you could have claimed asylum.
All asylum seekers who do not arrive by plane will have travelled through another European country. UKBA will have to show you were in a country long enough, or were aware you were in that country, to have been able to claim asylum. UKBA will try and establish this during your screening interview, when they ask about your journey to the UK If you are under 18, UKBA can only deport you if you have already claimed asylum in another European Union country. At the time of writing, the courts have found that conditions in Greece for asylum seekers (including the way asylum claims are considered) are so bad that they breach Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This means that the UK cannot deport an asylum seeker to Greece under the Dublin regulations. Conditions for asylum seekers (such as no legal representation, no interpretation, detention and destitution) in some other European countries are also very bad and it may be that in future deportations are also prohibited to these countries. Lawyers are currently attempting to prove that conditions for asylum seekers in Italy breach Article 3 conditions.
UKBA must give you five working days notice before the date of enforced removal (unless you are an unaccompanied minor).
You cannot be deported under the Dublin Regulations if you have not come directly from a safe third-country to the UK. For example, as an Iranian asylum seeker, you may have spent some time in Belgium then returned to Iran where you faced further persecution. If you then came to the UK, you cannot be deported to Belgium under the Dublin Regulations.
The UK should not attempt to deport you under Dublin Regulations if more than six months have passed since you claimed asylum in the UK and the application of the Dublin Regulations to your case – by this time, your application is now the UK’s responsibility.
Your asylum case is also the UK's responsibility if more than year has passed since you entered the UK.
There may be other circumstances where your deportation should not come under the Dublin Regulations. You should discuss these with a legal advisor and make sure that UKBA have correctly informed the third country/Dublin office (in the country to which they are trying to remove you) of these circumstances.
You can find more information about the third country/Dublin offices in other European countries at the JRS Europe website.
