{"id":346,"date":"2017-03-10T12:12:59","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T09:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rsaegean.org\/?p=346\/"},"modified":"2020-07-06T14:56:08","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T11:56:08","slug":"the-highest-court-of-greece-will-decide-on-the-eu-turkey-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/the-highest-court-of-greece-will-decide-on-the-eu-turkey-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"The highest court of Greece will decide on the EU-Turkey Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>\u201cA crucial day for refugee protection in Europe\u201d<\/strong><br \/>\nAthens\/Chios\/Frankfurt: Today the highest Greek Court\u00a0will hold a hearing to examine whether Turkey is a \u201csafe first country of asylum\u201d, as presumed by the EU-Turkey Deal. It will hear the\u00a0case of two Syrians whose asylum applications had been deemed inadmissible\u00a0on first and second instance examination and who therefore are at risk of being deported to Turkey. Their cases were never examined on the merits. This is the second hearing at the Council of State to be hold about this case. Previously the 4th Chamber of the Council of State decided after a public hearing on 29. November 2016\u00a0 to refer the case to the plenary given the importance of the issues raised.<\/p>\n<p>The legal team of Refugee Support Aegean (RSA)[1] represents one of the two Syrians. RSA\u2019s stance is that Turkey is not a safe third country and that the so called \u201cIndependent Appeals Committees\u201d who deemed the two applicants as inadmissible are in fact unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>Until today no refugee from Syria has been deported to Turkey on the basis that Turkey is a safe third country. Returns to Turkey were prevented by the efforts of RSA legal team and other organisations in Greece. \u201cSince the commencement of the cynical deal with Erdogan the RSA team is working passionately to support protection seekers in exercising their rights in spite of an unfair and unlawful procedure,\u201d says Karl Kopp, PRO ASYL Director of European Affairs.<\/p>\n<p>The former Appeal Committees\u00a0have played an important role in preventing the return of Syrian refugees by overturning first instance decisions, deeming asylum applications inadmissible. In all but three cases, the former Appeal Committees concluded that Turkey is not safe, since the country is not in line with international standards.<\/p>\n<p>On June 2016 the Greek government\u00a0replaced the competent Appeal Committees with the new so called \u201cIndependent Appeals Committees\u201d. This replacement was denounced by members of the invalidated Committees as well as representatives of civil society in Greece as\u00a0a political\u00a0intervention against the independence and objectivity of asylum procedures.<\/p>\n<p>The decision\u00a0of the Council\u00a0of State regarding the constitutionality of the new Committees and consequently whether their decisions to allow deportation to Turkey will hold or not, is crucial for the protection of refugees in Europe and the future of the dirty EU-Turkey Deal.<\/p>\n[1] Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) is a non-profit organisation in support of refugees. The RSA team in Athens, on Lesvos and Chios monitors human rights violations and offers legal aid and social support for asylum seekers and\u00a0refugees. RSA is the implementing partner of the Foundation PRO ASYL project RSPA (Refugee Support program Aegean).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cA crucial day for refugee protection in Europe\u201d Athens\/Chios\/Frankfurt: Today the highest Greek Court\u00a0will hold a hearing to examine whether&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138,6,5],"tags":[218,18],"class_list":{"0":"post-346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-image","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu-turkey-statement","8":"category-press-releases","9":"category-publications","10":"tag-2017-2","11":"tag-featured","12":"post_format-post-format-image"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4779,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions\/4779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rsaegean.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}