The Court of Justice of the European Union published a new ruling on Thursday, July 6th, according to which EU member states cannot revoke the refugee status of migrants based on a “serious crime” conviction. According to the update, a court must now prove the criminal is also a danger to their communities, independent of the crime itself.
The clarification of EU law was issued after three separate cases were brought in front of the court by Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands, where refugees were convicted of serious crimes and local authorities moved to strip them of their asylum.
According to the court, the conviction alone is not enough to revoke refugee status:
A revocation measure is subject to two separate conditions being satisfied, namely, first, that the third-country national concerned has been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime and, secondly, that it has been established that third-country national constitutes a danger to the community of the Member State in which he or she is present.
Whereas previously, one might assume that committing a “particularly serious crime” is ample reason to consider someone dangerous. According to the court, that’s not the case:
The existence of a danger to the community … cannot be regarded as established by the mere fact that he or she has been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime.
The individual concerned must … constitute a genuine, present, and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society.
The existence of this “serious threat” must be established independently of the crime, judged by competent authorities for each individual case, the court added, by a thorough assessment of “all the circumstances.”
Furthermore, the ruling states that even if both conditions have been met, the option to revoke the refugee status “must be exercised in observance of … the principle of proportionality,” meaning that a competent authority must also establish that the punishment matches the level of danger the individual represents.
Lastly, if these three separate requirements weren’t enough bureaucracy, the court also issued guidelines for what exactly can be regarded as a sufficiently serious crime to even get things moving.
According to the document, the crime must be “of exceptional seriousness,” in so far as it “most seriously undermines the legal order of the community.” Also, the “degree of seriousness” cannot be attained by combining multiple, lesser offenses, and the assessment of it must take into account all of the specific circumstances of the case.
