Type: Judgment

Authority: European Authorities: Euopean Union' Court of Justice

Date: 03/02/2010

Subject: The Court, interpreting Directive 2004/83/EC, affirmed that refugee status ceases to exist when, having regard to a change of circumstances of a significant and non-temporary nature in the third country concerned, the circumstances which justified the person’s fear of persecution on the basis of which refugee status was granted, no longer exist and that person has no other reason to fear being persecuted; for the purposes of assessing a change of circumstances, the competent authorities must verify that the actors of protection, that may comprise international organisations controlling the State or a substantial part of the territory of the State, including by means of the presence of a multinational force in that territory, operate an effective legal system for the detection, prosecution and punishment of acts constituting persecution and that the national concerned will have access to such protection if he ceases to have refugee status; the standard of probability used to assess the risk stemming from those other circumstances is the same as that applied when refugee status was granted; the person concerned, in order to demonstrate that there is still a well-founded fear of persecution, may invoke circumstances other than those as a result of which he was recognised as being a refugee only when the reason for persecution is different from that accepted at the time when refugee status was granted and only when there are earlier acts or threats of persecution which are connected with the reason for persecution being examined at that stage.

Parties: Aydin Salahadin Abdulla

Classification: Freedoms - Art. 18 Right to asylum - Refugees

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Notices: Effectiveness of the Charter
The Court made reference to the Charter, including this text between the sources of the EU law.