The Concept of “Safe Third Country” – Legal Standards & Implementation in the Greek Asylum System
February 2024
The concept of “safe third country” is gaining renewed prominence in European asylum systems as governments across the continent seek ways to shift their responsibility for processing refugee claims to other states. The concept, entailing a ground for inadmissibility of asylum claims without an assessment on the merits, is at the forefront of the recently
The concept of “safe third country” is gaining renewed prominence in European asylum systems as governments across the continent seek ways to shift their responsibility for processing refugee claims to other states. The concept, entailing a ground for inadmissibility of asylum claims without an assessment on the merits, is at the forefront of the recently agreed reform of the Common European Asylum System
(CEAS) at EU level and of domestic policy implementation or exploration from Greece to the United Kingdom and Germany. These safe third country policies regularly come to a direct clash with human rights and the rule of law, hence their extensive litigation before national jurisdictions and European courts.
The present study recalls the main European legislative and jurisprudential standards underlying the safe third country concept and analyses their implementation in the Greek asylum system. It focuses particularly on the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and Greek courts and tribunals, i.e. the Independent Appeals Committees (IAC) responsible for hearing asylum appeals.