❖ Another decision rejected an asylum application as manifestly unfounded, according to Article 93 par. 2 d, on the basis that the applicant provided false information regarding his nationality and tried to mislead the authorities. ❖ In some cases, where lawyers asked Lesvos RIS for copies of their clients’ files, there was no report to be provided regarding the nationality assessment.596 ❖ A report has been submitted asking for the intervention of the Greek Ombudsperson regarding a case pending at second instance. 597 ❖ No cases of the above-described malpractice were observed in the mainland. 598 On 4 March 2024, the 21st Appeals Committee accepted the appeal of an asylum applicant from Eritrea whose application had been rejected after she had been wrongly registered and considered as Ethiopian, and granted her refugee status.599 According to the reasoning of the decision: With regard to the report in her file stating that she has Ethiopian nationality, the applicant stated that she is originally from Eritrea […] The applicant’s claims concerning her personal data, her country of origin, her religious beliefs, her family situation, her education and her employment are accepted by the Committee with the benefit of the doubt in so far as they are considered reasonable, coherent and free from logical gaps and contradictions. Some ambiguities and vagueness regarding the country of origin are considered justified by the young age (one year) at which she left her country [Eritrea] and went to Ethiopia, as well as the insufficient presence of a general family and support network in Ethiopia (her mother died when she was 10 years old and she had no relatives in Ethiopia) where she could have obtained more information about her country [Eritrea]. In accordance with Article 92(5) Asylum Code, applications of asylum applicants nationals of countries listed as ‘safe countries of origin’ in the national list have been examined on the merits only to the extent of their claims against the application of the safe country of origin assumption. 600 It has been highlighted that “the practice of applying different asylum procedures according to the nationalities of the applicants is arbitrary, as it is neither provided by EU nor by domestic law. In addition, it violates the principle of non-discrimination as set out in Article 3 of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 relating to the status of refugees (Geneva Convention). Instead, it is explicitly based on EUAA’s undisclosed internal guidelines, which frame the hotspot asylum procedures in order to implement the EU-Türkiye statement.”601 Exempted categories from the fast-track border procedure under the Asylum Code As opposed to previous legislation, the Asylum Code repealed the exception of persons belonging to vulnerable groups and applicants falling under the Dublin Regulation from the fast-track border procedure (see Identification and Special procedural guarantees). Data for the number of cases exempted from the border procedure on grounds of vulnerability and need for special procedurals guaranteed under the Asylum Code in 2024 are not available. In 2024, Lesvos RAO automatically applied non-border procedures for applicants to whom first instance decisions had not been notified within 28 days from registration, without however first issuing any decision for a referral to the regular procedure as, according to the RAO, this is not foreseen in the law.602 In these cases, the deadline for the appeal is automatically extended as follows: for admissibility, the 10 days are automatically extended to 20 days, for eligibility, to 30 days, and for eligibility for cases falling under the 596 597 598 599 600 601 602 Information acquired during Lesvos LAsWG meeting of 28- November 2023. Information acquired during Lesvos LAsWG meeting, 28 November 2023. Information acquired during Athens LAsWG meetings, 2023. Decision IP/148736/2024 21st Appeals Committee, summary [in Greek] in: GCR et al, Greek Asylum Case Law Report, Issue 2/2024, available here, 3. Case represented by a lawyer from the Asylum Service Registry of Lawyers. See for example Decision 18695/2023 issued by 21 st Appeals Committee concerning the case of an asylum applicant from Ghana; a summary of the decision is available in Greek in GCR, HIAS, RSA et al, Issue 2/2023 of the Greek Asylum Case Law Report, available at: https://tinyurl.com/yn6yb77u. Greens/EFA, The EU-Türkiye Statement and the Greek Hotspots: A failed European Pilot Project in Refugee Policy, June 2018, available at: https://bit.ly/2sJM2H4, p. 17. Information provided by Lesvos RAO, January 2025. 118