the alleged pushbacks along the Turkish-Greek border stop and Greece revokes its decision to consider Türkiye a Safe Third Country’ (24 May 2022).370 Despite the fact that readmissions to Türkiye have been suspended since March 2020, the Asylum Service continues not to apply Article 38(4) of the Procedural Directive to applicants whose application is examined on the admissibility under the safe country concept vis-a vis Türkiye. Thus, applicants subject to the Joint Ministerial Decision, whose application has been rejected as inadmissible, are deprived of access to an in merits asylum procedure and they face the risk to remain in legal limbo, without access to reception conditions and health care and in risk of detention. Data for 2022 is not available. It should be noted that an application for the annulment of the JMD was submitted before the Greek Council of State and its examination was discussed on 11 March 2022. 371 In a secision issued on 3 February 2023, the Council of State referred a question to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of article 38 of 2013/32/EU Directive, since Türkiye has not accepted any readmissions from Greece since March 2020 (Council of State (Plenary) Decision no 177/2023). In particular, the majority opinion considers that it is not possible to designate a country as a safe third country if the readmission of the applicant to that country does not appear to be possible. This possibility should be assessed both in terms of legal provisions and obligations of the third country to accept readmissions as well as the actual compliance to those legal provisions. Readmissions to Türkiye are not implemented and the competent authority did not adequately explore the possibility of Türkiye changing its stance. Thus, in view of ensuring a quick examination of asylum applications372 the national list established by the JMD should be annulled. There has also been two dissenting opinions on whether the non-implementation of returns should be taken into consideration either at the time of issuance of an individual decision on the asylum application assessing whether Türkiye is a safe third country or at the time of executing the decision of return and not before including this country in the national list of safe third countries. However, given that reasonable doubts arose as to the meaning of Article 38 of the Directive, the Court postponed its final judgement and formulated preliminary questions to the CJEU. The Court requested clarification as to whether Article 38 of the Directive should be interpreted as precluding national (regulatory) provisions, which characterises a third country as generally safe for certain categories of applicants for international protection and that country has undertaken the legal obligation to readmit those categories of applicants to its territory, despite for a period of over twenty months, that the country that is considered as safe third country having refused readmissions ; or whether the readmission to the third country is a cumulative condition for the issuance of the national (regulatory) act, according to which a third country is characterised as generally safe for certain categories of applicants for international protection, or for the issuance of the individual act, according to which a specific application for international protection is rejected as inadmissible on the "safe third country" ground; or, finally, whether the readmission to the "safe third country" should only be determined at the time of the decision’s execution, when the decision to reject the application for international protection is based on the "safe third country" ground. Finally, the 42799/3-6-2021 JMD declaring Türkiye as a safe third country was amended by Decision no. 458568/2021 (FEK 5949/16-12-2021) to include Albania and Northern Macedonia as safe third countries for all nationals entering Greece from the countries listed. In addition to this, JMD 78391/10-02-2022 (FEK 667/15-02-2022) was issued in February 2022 regarding the national list of safe countries of origin 373. The list includes Egypt, Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Georgia, 370 371 372 373 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament sixth annual report on the Facility for Refugees in Türkiye, 24 May 2022, available at: https://bit.ly/417mB1B. GCR, Press Release, Εκδικάστηκε ενώπιον του ΣτΕ η αίτηση ακύρωσης της Απόφασης με την οποία η Τουρκία χαρακτηρίστηκε ασφαλής τρίτη χώρα, 15 March 2022, available in Greek at: https://bit.ly/365HUJ9. As provided by Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Article 38 of the 2013/32/EU Directive. The formation of the National List of Safe Countries of Origin is provided in Article 92 para. 1 (b) of the Asylum Code. 84