North Macedonia

The Court found in particular that the Hungarian authorities had failed in their duty under Article 3 to assess the risks of the applicants not having proper access to asylum proceedings in Serbia or being subjected to chain-refoulement, which could have seen them being sent to Greece, where conditions in refugee camps had already been found to be in violation of Article 3. In a development of its case-law, it held that Article 5 was not applicable to the applicants’ case as there had been no de facto deprivation of liberty in the transit zone. Among other things, the Court found that the applicants had entered the transit zone of their own initiative and it had been possible in practice for them to return to Serbia, where they had not faced any danger to their life or health. Their fears of a lack of access to Serbia’s asylum system or of refoulement to Greece, as expressed under Article 3, had not been enough to make their stay in the transit zone involuntary.

21 November 2019 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Document type: Case Law | Topic(s): Expulsion - Freedom from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment - Rejection at border - Right to liberty and security - Safe third country - Transit | Countries: Bangladesh - Greece - Hungary - North Macedonia - Serbia - Türkiye

“(….) even where national security is at stake, the concepts of lawfulness and the rule of law in a democratic society require that deportation measures affecting fundamental human rights be subject to some form of adversarial proceedings before an independent authority or a court competent to effectively scrutinise the reasons for them and review the relevant evidence, if need be with appropriate procedural limitations on the use of classified information.

17 May 2018 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Document type: Case Law | Legal Instrument: 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) | Topic(s): Expulsion - National security / Public order | Countries: North Macedonia - Serbia

15 September 2017 | Publisher: International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) | Document type: International Legal Instruments

11 April 2006 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Document type: Case Law | Topic(s): Complementary forms of protection - Exhaustion of domestic remedies - Expulsion - Immigration law - Residence permits / Residency - Right to family life | Countries: Netherlands Antilles - North Macedonia

10 November 2005 | Judicial Body: Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights | Document type: Case Law | Topic(s): Expulsion - Freedom from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment - Mental health - Public health | Countries: Netherlands - North Macedonia