The Dublin III Regulation establishes an EU-wide allocation mechanism that regulates which member state is responsible for conducting the asylum procedure in each individual case. Crucially, the allocation mechanism aims to protect family life and the best interest of the child. The Dublin III Regulation thus grants a whole range of individual legal rights to asylum seekers seeking to reunify with their family members.
The national asylum services responsible for the application of the allocation mechanism, however, frequently fail to comply with the legal standards as laid down in the Dublin III Regulation. Several member states, including Germany in particular, tend to reject so-called take charge requests from Greece and thereby deny the right to family reunification to countless people. In many cases, these rejections violate the Dublin III Regulation or lack a coherent justification altogether.
We challenge these systemic malpractices. The fact that we are dealing with transnational administrative procedures requires us to also respond with a transnational approach: we are thus working on these family reunification cases from our offices in Athens and Berlin simultaneously.
We provide free legal aid throughout the entire procedure, represent the applicants and their family members before national administrations, and challenge unlawful rejections before German administrative courts.
