Airport proceedings

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The airport procedure is a special asylum procedure in the transit area of an international airport prior to entry.

Germany

The legal basis in Germany is Section 18a Asylum Act (AsylG).

The law is part of the new regulations on asylum law passed by the German Bundestag on May 26, 1993 as part of the asylum compromise . The airport procedure has been carried out since July 1, 1993 at those German airports where there is accommodation for asylum seekers on the airport grounds. The airport procedure has so far been used at five German airports: Berlin-Schönefeld , Düsseldorf , Frankfurt , Hamburg and Munich .

In 2009, 435 people applied for asylum or other protection in the airport procedure (94 of them from Sri Lanka), in 2010 there were 735 (of which 167 from Iran and 166 from Afghanistan), and from January to October 2011 there were a total of 714 people.

Procedure

During the airport procedure, every asylum seeker who has no or falsified identity documents or who comes from a safe country of origin (defined in accordance with Section 29a AsylG and Annex to Section 29a in accordance with Article 16a (3 ) of the Basic Law ) is presented to the airport the entry into Germany, brought by the Federal Police to a refugee accommodation in the transit area of the airport. The asylum seeker must justify the asylum application to the Federal Police immediately upon arrival and must not leave the accommodation until a decision has been made on the application.

There are fingerprints taken and to the EURODAC acquired database. A comparison with existing data is used to determine whether the same person has already applied for asylum in another country; in this case the asylum seeker will be expelled there in accordance with the Dublin II procedure .

As with every asylum procedure, there is a hearing before the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). Such a hearing is a central element of any asylum procedure.

Only if the BAMF rejects the asylum application within the stipulated period of two days as obviously unfounded will the Federal Police deny the applicant entry; he then has the right to advice from a lawyer who is familiar with asylum law. Within three days, supported by the lawyer, he can file an urgent application for provisional legal protection before the administrative court and at the same time bring an action against the refusal notice of the Federal Office.

The competent administrative court will decide on the urgent application for provisional legal protection within the next 14 days. The decision is usually made on the basis of the documents available, without the asylum seeker being heard again. Depending on the result, either the asylum seeker is allowed to enter Germany so that he can pursue his asylum application, or he is rejected. If rejection is not possible due to missing IDs and the Federal Police must therefore first seek IDs for the trip, the asylum seeker must spend the necessary time, but not more than 18 months, in the closed refugee accommodation in the transit area. If this accommodation lasts longer than 30 days, the asylum seeker is in the meantime § 15 para. 5 u. 6 AufenthG to a judge so that he can arrange for the detention to be placed.

The complaint against the rejection of the asylum application will be decided at a later point in time, usually only after the deportation has taken place .

Legal evaluation and criticism

For the legal assessment of national airport procedures, it is crucial whether the stay of refugees in the airport area is to be assessed as a deprivation of liberty . The European Court of Human Rights evaluated the stay in the transit area of the Paris-Orly airport in the decision of 1996 in the Amuur case as a deprivation of liberty and consequently classified the airport procedure as a violation of Article 5, Paragraph 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights .

In 1996, the German Federal Constitutional Court decided, in contrast to the decision of the European Court of Justice, that staying in the airport area should not be regarded as a deprivation of liberty.

With regard to European secondary law , Amnesty Germany assessed the airport procedure in 2012 as a violation of Article 6 of Directive 2008/115 / EC and Article 18 of Directive 2005/85 / EC .

Critics, including church, charitable and human rights organizations , sharply criticize the airport procedure. They allege that the three-day period does not give asylum seekers enough time; This applies even more to traumatized, sick, pregnant, too young, too old or otherwise vulnerable refugees. In a statement it says: “The time pressure makes it impossible for people who have just fled and in some cases severely traumatized people to calm down and to be able to substantiate their reasons for asylum. Some of them are unable to negotiate due to the circumstances of the flight. ”Their access to lawyers is also insufficient.
Caritas criticized the fact that the procedure was also applied to families with young children and to unaccompanied refugee minors aged 16 or 17; According to § 12 AsylVfG a. F. (new name since October 24, 2015: AsylG) asylum seekers, so that it could happen that they go through the asylum procedure without a guardian and without legal assistance. In addition, even unaccompanied refugees under the age of 16 are generally not exempt from the airport asylum procedure. The airport procedure is also less efficient than a domestic procedure from a cost perspective. The legislature has responded to this with the Asylum Procedure Acceleration Act and an amendment to Section 12 AsylG: Since October 24, 2015, only people of legal age are able to act in the asylum procedure. People under the age of 18 always need a legal representative, who may be appointed by the family court in the case of unaccompanied minors.

In autumn 2012, the Federal Council rejected an initiative brought in by the states of Brandenburg and Rhineland-Palatinate to abolish the accelerated airport asylum procedure.

The Federal Court of Justice upheld a lawsuit against a ban on demonstrations on the premises of Schönefeld Airport : the generally accessible area of ​​an airport is considered a public space.

Plans to expand to border zones

In view of the refugee crisis in 2015 , according to information from the FAZ, there were plans to create the legal basis for applying the procedure to international borders.

In the course of the asylum dispute in 2018 , Horst Seehofer spoke at the beginning of July 2018 of an agreement between the coalition partners on plans for a “ transit procedure in police facilities” for refugees who have already applied for asylum in another EU country. These plans are based on the construct of a “fiction of non-entry”, which means that a foreigner who has not yet left various checkpoints has not yet entered the country. The police union does not consider this construct to be legally tenable: In view of a ruling by the Federal Court of Justice from 2015, according to which Germany's borders with other Schengen states are considered to be crossed as soon as the traveler has physically passed them, the regulation of the airport procedure cannot be transferred to border zones .

Austria

In Austria, the airport procedure is regulated in Section 3 (“Special provisions for the airport procedure”) in Section 31 , Section 32 and Section 33 of the Federal Act on the Granting of Asylum .

Switzerland

For Switzerland, Article 22 AsylG regulates the procedure at the airport. It is used in Zurich and Geneva airports .

Internationally known cases

One of the refugees who have gone through an airport procedure is the Indian Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar , who left for Canada at the end of 1994 to seek asylum there, but was intercepted in Frankfurt and then rejected in the airport procedure. On his return to India in January 1995, he was arrested and allegedly interrogated under torture and without legal representation, after which he signed that he had been involved in a 1993 bombing in New Delhi; on April 13, 2013, the Indian Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in the last instance . In 1997, the Frankfurt am Main Administrative Court ruled that Singh Bullar should not have been expelled under Section 53 of the Aliens Act because there was a real risk of torture or other treatment that violates human rights. The federal government later campaigned for him several times. In May 2013 , Federal President Joachim Gauck and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle each sent an appeal to their Indian counterparts to convert the death penalty into imprisonment. In March 2014, the Indian Supreme Court changed his sentence to life imprisonment because of the delay in deciding on his pardon and his health.

Web links

Individual evidence

General

  1. ↑ a b Position paper on the airport procedure. (PDF; 274 kB) (No longer available online.) Amnesty International, April 18, 2012, archived from the original on December 14, 2015 ; Retrieved May 7, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.amnesty.de

Germany

  1. ↑ a b c d Holger Winkelmann: Airport proceedings extremely problematic. www.migrationsrecht.net, February 21, 2012, accessed May 5, 2013 .
  2. ↑ The protest against airport proceedings is growing. March 19, 2012, accessed May 1, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Initiatives urge the airport procedure for asylum seekers to be stopped. (No longer available online.) Protestant press service, formerly in the original ; Retrieved May 2, 2013 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.epd.de  
  4. ↑ a b Criticism of the airport procedure. Or: Why the airport procedure should be abolished. Caritas Frankfurt, accessed on May 7, 2013 .
  5. ↑ Unaccompanied minors in the airport procedure. Caritas Frankfurt, accessed on May 1, 2013 .
  6. ^ From October 20, 2015 ( BGBl. 2015 I p. 1722 ).
  7. ↑ Recommended resolution and report. (PDF; 84 kB) In: Drucksache 17/11125. German Bundestag, October 22, 2012, accessed on May 1, 2013 .
  8. ↑ application. (PDF; 70 kB) In: Drucksache 17/9174. German Bundestag, March 28, 2012, accessed on May 1, 2013 .
  9. ↑ BGH allows protests in front of the deportation prison: demonstrations also on airport grounds. Legal Tribune Online, June 26, 2015, accessed July 9, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Government plans law on rapid asylum procedures. FAZ, September 30, 2015, accessed on September 30, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Judgment of the Frankfurt am Main Administrative Court of October 6, 1997, reference number 8 E 50399 \ 94
  12. Jump up ↑ India: Davinder Pal Singh. (PDF; 189 kB) (No longer available online.) Amnesty International, archived from the original on April 18, 2015 ; Retrieved May 7, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.proasyl.de
  13. ↑ Decision in New Delhi: Court stops execution of deported Indian. Spiegel online, January 31, 2014, accessed April 18, 2015 .
  14. ↑ Germany seeks clemency for Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar. May 10, 2013, accessed May 25, 2013 .
  15. ↑ SC commutes Bhullar's death sentence to life imprisonment. In: zeenews.india.com. March 31, 2014, accessed April 18, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Upset Bitta to 'seek permission' from Sonia for self-immolation. In: zeenews.india.com. March 31, 2014, accessed April 18, 2015 .

Switzerland

  1. ↑ The asylum procedure at the airport: Art. 22 ff. AsylG. (PDF; 36 kB) (No longer available online.) Federal Office for Migration (BMF), archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; Retrieved May 12, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / formig.officeco.ch
  2. ↑ Overview of reception and processing centers. Federal Office for Migration (BMF), archived from the original on September 23, 2013 ; Retrieved May 12, 2013 .
  1. ↑ bundestag.de December 8, 2011: Answer from the Federal Government (Drucksache 17/7870)
  2. ↑ ECHR, judgment of June 25, 1996, Az. 19776/92, full text
  3. ↑ BGH, judgment of June 26, 2015, Az. V ZR 227/14, full text
  4. ↑ SPD and Union unanimously ended asylum dispute - no “transit centers”. In: Tagesschau. ARD, July 6, 2018, accessed on July 6, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Asylum Compromise: What is a transit center? In: FAZ. July 3, 2018, accessed July 6, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Asylum Compromise: Police unions divided over transit centers. In: FAZ. July 5, 2018, accessed July 6, 2018 .