2.1. Adequate support during the interview According to Article 72 (2) Asylum Code, where applicants have been identified as applicants in need of special procedural guarantees, they shall be provided with adequate support in order to be in the position to benefit from the rights and comply with the obligations in the framework of the asylum procedure. The Asylum Code provides examples of forms of adequate support that can be granted in the procedure. More specifically:704 ❖ The possibility of additional breaks during the personal interview; ❖ The possibility for the applicant to move during the interview if their health condition so requires; and ❖ Leniency to minor inconsistencies and contradictions, to the extent that they relate to the applicant’s health condition. National legislation expressively provides that each caseworker conducting an asylum interview shall be ‘trained in particular as of the special needs of women, children, and victims of violence and torture.’ 705 The law also provides that, when a woman is being interviewed, the interviewer, as well as the interpreter, should also be female where this has been expressly requested by the applicant. 706 On this note, it is important to recall recommendations made to Greece by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which, in its February 2024 Concluding observations on the combined eighth and ninth periodic reports of Greece, inter alia, noted the need to “[e]nsure the application of a gender-sensitive approach in receiving refugee and asylum-seeking women and in considering asylum claims, including by training immigration officers on gender-sensitive interviewing techniques, and that gender-based violence against women is recognized as a protection ground”.707 In practice, GCR is aware of cases where the vulnerability or particular circumstances of the applicant have not been taken into account or have not properly been assessed at first or/and second instance. According to GCR’s observations, inadequate interview conditions continued to be reported in the premises of RAO and AAUs in 2024 and 2025 as interpretation was a challenge. Notably, registrations and interviews were conducted without consideration of potential vulnerabilities and relevant needs. Certain interviews and registrations took place simultaneously in different spaces within the same container, which does not provide proper sound insulation and is not in line with the principle of confidentiality. Given that, for the most of 2024, there was a significant gap in the provision of interpretation services with RICs/ CACCs/ CAFTAAS and RAOs, vulnerability assessment was in practice unfeasible. The Appeals Committees further contribute to the non-implementation of special procedural guarantees through a strict interpretation of Article 72 Asylum Code. Several Committees have ruled that the onus is on the asylum applicant to establish exactly what evidence they would have been able to submit in their specific case if procedural guarantees had been provided during the procedure. 708 704 705 706 707 708 Article 67(2) IPA. Article 82(12)(a) Asylum Code. Also, according to the Concluding observations on the combined eighth and ninth periodic reports of Greece of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women “training immigration officers on gender-sensitive interviewing techniques, and that gender-based violence against women is recognized as a protection ground”, available here, 13. Article 82(5) Asylum Code, as well as Administrative Court of Appeal of Athens, Decision 3043/2018, in Farmakidis-Markou Konstantinos, Refugee Law, Nomiki Bibliothiki, 2021, in greek, in which the court found that an applicant who has not requested an interpreter of the same gender for the interview cannot rely on this provision at a later stage. CEDAW, Concluding observations on the combined eighth and ninth periodic reports of Greece, February 2024, available at: https://tinyurl.com/3f8yvh9v, para. 44 (c). 6th Appeals Committee, Decision 30955/2020, 18 May 2021, para II.4; 12 th Appeals Committee, Decision 233902/2021, 9 September 2021, p. 3. 159