• Support in processing incoming requests only after agreement on SOPs, training, tools and reporting • Support in enhancing processing capacity for transfers • Provision of interpretation services for information provision and other activities of the Dublin Unit (face face-to- face and remote). Most administrative procedures, such as the submission of documentation, booking of appointments, receiving copies of an applicant’s file, are conducted only online. Physical presence in the context of Dublin procedures is only required at the registration stage, during which the asylum seeker is being fingerprinted, and must sign the relevant written consent. Applications for international protection cannot be lodged if the person refuses to be fingerprinted. In case of refusal, the person will remain undocumented. The fingerprints are crosschecked in the police’s database for possible Eurodac hits. GCR is not aware of any person who refused to be fingerprinted. Where an asylum application is being lodged in Greece and the authorities consider that another Member State is responsible for examining the application, Greece must issue a request for that Member State to take charge of the applicant no later than three months after the lodging of the application, in accordance with Article 21 of the Dublin III Regulation. However, following a change of practice on the part of the German Dublin Unit following the CJEU’s ruling in Mengesteab, the Greek Dublin Unit strives to send “take charge” requests within three months of the expression of the will to seek international protection, rather than the lodging of the claim by the Asylum Service, although Greece considers the actual lodging of the application and not the expression of a will to seek asylum as the starting point of this three-month deadline. The applicant is not officially informed by the Greek Dublin Unit of the fact that the request has been made, nor on the basis of what evidence. It is the asylum seekers legal representative who is following up the procedure and provides the applicant with feedback on the steps that have been made. Dublin Unit officers contact the applicant directly only if the case has been rejected, in order to request for supplementary documentation, which will be included in the re-examination request. In case of a final rejection, no written information is provided to the applicant. In practice, the case is internally referred to the regular procedure. On the contrary, if the reunification request is accepted, an inadmissibility decision mentioning that the requested Member State is responsible to examine the asylum application, based on the provisions of the Regulation (EU) 604/2013 is delivered to the applicant. Given the severe restrictions posed by other Member States on family reunification, as above-described, the Dublin Unit consistently prepares for a rejection and anticipates re-examination requests.445 A change in statistical practices of the Dublin Unit was noted since 2020, as the publication of monthly statistics of the Unit stopped in March 2020 to be substituted by Monthly Reports issued by the Ministry of Migration and Asylum.446 These Reports include some but not all the data previously provided by the monthly statistics of the Greek Dublin Unit. 2.2.1. Individualised guarantees During 2022, the Greek Dublin Unit continued to request individual guarantees concerning the reception conditions and access to the asylum procedure for Dublin returnees.447 There is no data as to the practice in 2023. With regards to take charge requests, most of the transfers concern family reunification cases and, therefore, the applicants have explicitly expressed their will to move to the third country. For children’s Best Interest Assessment, see above, section on application of the Dublin criteria. 445 446 447 ECRE, The Role of EASO Operations in National Asylum Systems’, 29 November 2019, available at: https://bit.ly/46IkjHB. Monthly reports of the Ministry of Migration and Asylum are available at: https://bit.ly/3OFlP83. AIDA, The Implementation of the Dublin III Regulation in 2022, November 2023, p. 19, available at: https://bit.ly/3smFIYS 95