European Commission. 3. Stop dismissing asylum applications as inadmissible based on the “safe third country” concept. ‘578 It should also be noted that as of 2021 ‘the Commission has requested the Greek authorities to apply Article 38(4) of the Asylum Procedures Directive (2013/32/EU), to the extent the conditions are met, to applicants whose applications have been deemed inadmissible on the basis of the Safe Third Country Concept under the Joint Ministerial Decision of 7 June 2021, in order to avoid the legal limbo you refer to. The Commission will continue to monitor the situation on the ground’.579 Moreover, the Greek Ombudsman highlighted that:580 ‘if readmission to that country is not possible, the application must be examined by the Greek authorities on the merits. Otherwise, this creates a perpetual cycle of admissibility assessments of applications for international protection, without ever examining their merits and without readmission to seek protection in the safe third country being possible. As a result, the fulfilment of the objective of the Geneva Convention and of relevant European and national legislation on refugee protection is essentially rendered null and void.’ According to internal SOP of the Asylum Service in October 2021, still in force, asylum seekers of these nationalities that had crossed from Türkiye a year ago or more must be considered as not having a special link with the country or that in any case the special link with Türkiye had been breached. Subsequently, this was the rationale, applied to the majority of cases examined before the RAOs on the islands, leading to admissibility decisions and an examination of the asylum applications on their merits. Several first instance decisions with the same reasoning have been issued since October 2021, namely since the aforementioned SOP started to be implemented. This has been of great importance for all Syrian cases, and even Afghanis and Somalis stuck in “limbo” in Greece for more than a year, many of whom were waiting for the examination of their subsequent applications. However, this practice was not consistent. For instance, there were cases, where the Asylum Service had applied the new JMD even to the cases of old arrivals that had been already referred to the regular procedure. On 7 October 2021, GCR and Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) filed a judicial review before the Greek Council of State for the annulment of the JMD 42799/03.06.2021 designating Türkiye as a safe third country for nationals of Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan and Bangladesh. 581 On 4 March 2022, requests for the continuation of the hearing were filed before the Council of State for the annulment of the subsequent JMD, 458568/15.12.2021, of the Minister of Migration and Asylum and the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. The application for annulment was examined before the Plenary of the Council of State on 11 March 2022. On 3 February 2023, the Plenary of the Council of State issued the decision No 177/2023,582 which postpones the final judgment and refers the following questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a preliminary ruling, given that there are reasonable doubts as to the meaning of Article 38 of the Directive: a) Must Article 38 of the Asylum Procedures Directive, read in conjunction with Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, be interpreted as precluding national legislation, designating a third country as generally safe for certain categories of applicants for 578 579 580 581 582 Letter to the Director of the Asylum Service by co-signing civil society organisations, European Commission dispels Greece’s designation of Türkiye as a ‘safe third country’ for refugees – Repeal the national list of safe third countries, Ref. no: β/72/27.10.2022, 27 October 2022, available in Greek at: https://bit.ly/40Lhq5J. European Commission, Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs, Ref.Ares(2021)7836311, 17 December 2021. (RSA, Greece arbitrarily deems Türkiye a ‘safe third country’ in flagrant violation of rights, February 2022, available at: https://bit.ly/3iIFsen, 5; Ombudsman, Letters 301551/41050/2021 and 301755/41017/2021, 22 July 2021. GCR, ‘Decision declaring Türkiye a ‘safe third country’ brought before Greek Council of State’, 7 October 2021, available at: https://bit.ly/3iLkeMJ. Plenary of the Council of State, 177/2023, available in Greek at: https://bit.ly/426WSpv. See also RSA, Key points of the Greek Council of State ruling on the ‘safe third country’ concept’, 17 February 2023, available at: https://bit.ly/3FB91KC. 132