ECRE/HHC Legal Note: Effective Remedies in National Security Related Asylum Cases, With Particular Focus on Access to Classified Information

Joint Legal Note by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) aims at providing guidance as to the standards under EU and international law relating to examination of national security-related asylum cases with a view to guarantee the right to effective remedy.

Chapter II sets out the applicable EU and international law and briefly describes the applicable jurisprudence of the CJEU and ECtHR with particular attention to their relevance in asylum cases. Subsequently, Chapter III firstly focuses on (i) standards regarding the examination of the lawfulness of classification by courts and on access to classified data and secondly, on (ii) standards relating to judicial review of asylum decisions invoking national security grounds.

The legal note circles around the following issues:
i. The requirements of judicial review ensuring the applicant’s rights of the defence.
ii. Judicial examination of whether the classification of information underlying an asylum decision is
justified.
iii. Subsequent measures once the court holds that disclosure is necessary.
iv. The meaning of ‘the essence of the grounds’ as interpreted by the CJEU and the ECtHR.
v. The definition of national security threat under EU law.
vi. Assessment and the test in judicial review concerning the verification of a national security threat.
vii. Specific rights of the applicant to be observed throughout the procedure.