for a remedy to be effective it must be accessible during a person’s detention, and it must be capable of leading to release.181 Thus, structural obstacles preventing access to administrative procedures, courts, or legal counsel de facto amount to the deprivation of an effective legal remedy. 3. Practices on Kos a. Formal Procedures i. Access to Asylum and Information about Asylum Procedures We have found that detained asylum seekers have limited access to information regarding the asylum procedure. Detained persons in Kos PRDC are routinely registered within the asylum procedure, which usually occurs without access to legal advice or information. For detained persons who are still asylum seekers, certain structural barriers significantly hamper their access to information about the asylum procedure and their individual applications. For example, asylum seekers detained in the PRDC cannot leave the facility to go to the asylum service, unless transferred there by the police for a specific appointment. Instead, asylum seekers who are detained must either e-mail the asylum service to request information about their cases (a slow and inefficient option) or rely on the police for information. Similarly, the police are responsible for notifying asylum seekers in the PRDC about any decisions regarding their asylum applications. Clients have expressed to Equal Rights that these notifications routinely take place without an interpreter, often leaving people confused about the reasons or consequences of a negative decision or the right to legal assistance. A lack of formal information channels causes information to circulate in a word-of-mouth fashion, often reflecting asylum seekers’ many fears and anxieties. Joud told us that while he had not planned to submit an asylum application in Greece, he had heard from others in detention that he would be detained for at least 18 months if he did not lodge a claim. Louis told us that when he arrived in detention, he became worried when others in detention advised him on accessing the asylum procedure. He told us: “everyone kept telling me there were no interpreters and I wouldn’t be interviewed for a year and two months and that really gave me problems…when I finally got to have my interview after two months I was relieved…”. The information circulated is therefore at times unnecessarily distressing to detained asylum seekers. We have also observed the spread of inaccurate information while administering client-counselling session. Two of our clients, in separate appointments, asked us whether it was true that all Syrian nationals who had fled military service would automatically be given refugee status. It became apparent to us that a recent CJEU judgment, that held that fleeing the Syrian military was a ground for asylum, had been misinterpreted and discussed in the PRDC. We had to explain to our clients that this judgment did not automatically mean they would receive refugee status, and that Syrians on the islands were still routinely rejected under the border procedure to assess whether they could be returned to Turkey under safe third country laws.182 This informal spread of information among asylum seekers can therefore give rise to false hope—a dangerous prospect considering the emotional desperation already prevalent throughout this population. the Court of Justice, it emerges that the duty to state reasons also applies to the national authorities taking a decision on the basis of EU legislation. CJEU, Judgement of 15 October 1987, UNECTEF v Heylens and others, 222/86, para 15; CJEU, Judgement of 15 February 2007, BVBA Management, Training en Consultancy v Benelux-Merkenbureau, C-239/05, para 36. Also cite S.C. v Romania § 76. 181 ECtHR, Judgement of 19/05/2016, No. 37289/12, JN v, UK, para 88. 182 For an in-depth discussion of the admissibility procedure for Syrians on the Eastern Aegean Islands see Equal Rights Beyond Border, Consequences of the EU-Turkey Statement: the Situation of Syrian Asylum Seekers on the Greek Aegean Islands (July 2021), available at: https://bit.ly/3vSVt6Z. 25 DETENTION OF MIGRANTS ON THE ISLAND OF KOS