Belgium condemned for not providing asylum seekers accommodation

Belgium has failed to comply with a Brussels court ruling calling on the national authorities to provide housing for an asylum seeker, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg said on Tuesday.

A Guinean citizen brought the case before the Strasbourg-based Court after the Belgian State failed to comply with a final decision issued by a Brussels court in 2022. At the time, the court ordered authorities to abide by national law and provide him with “material assistance” and “accommodation”.

The plaintiff claimed that he had been living rough for several months and had only been accommodated after he followed an “interim measure” from the ECHR.

Belgium’s Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRA) aims to issue a decision on applications within six months, but the COVID-19 pandemic created a delay in procedures, while the number of migrants has increased.

Due to long procedures and increased entries to reception centres, while exits decreased, more applicants ended up on the streets.

The European court’s judges acknowledged that Belgium was facing a “difficult situation” at the time, given the “increase of more than 42%” in applications for international protection in 2022 compared to the previous year” and the arrival of “65,000 Ukrainian nationals”.

Talking to AFP, State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor stressed that the human rights court recognised Belgium’s “significant efforts” to finance “associative schemes, create additional accommodation, recruit staff and shorten processing times for asylum applications”.

In the first quarter of this year, the government took measures to tackle the crisis by doubling the number of forced returns and with a new agreement on migration, which notably calls for more than 2,000 additional reception places to be created in addition to the 8,000 already existing.

The European court also acknowledges Belgian authorities’ decision to “focus the network’s accommodation capacity on the most vulnerable individuals, ” which delays the accommodation of “applicants for international protection with the same profile” as the Guinean plaintiff.

However, it notes the “systemic failure” of Belgian authorities to “enforce final judicial decisions concerning the reception of applicants for international protection”. Additionally, the Court does not find the delay of several months taken “to enforce a court order aimed at protecting human dignity” to be “reasonable”, considering it a “clear refusal to comply with the orders issued by the domestic court.”

There are currently 358 “similar applications” pending for which the Court has granted interim measures.

Green (Ecolo) member of federal parliament Simon Moutquin reacted to the condemnation on Twitter: “After more than 1600 interim measures for failing to receive asylum seekers, the ECHR has issued its first condemnation against Belgium in this respect. Our country does not respect fundamental rights.”

“[…] There is a very simple short-term solution: accommodate all the people who do not have a place to stay in hotels or barracks,” something his party has been calling for “since the beginning of the crisis,” but that “the right (and [Flemish social democratic] Vooruit) are blocking,” he added.

In her reaction, de Moor pointed out that she strongly advocated the agreement reached in early June between EU member states on reforming the asylum system.

“We need a fairer distribution of asylum seekers in the European Union, but above all, a rapid border procedure for those who have little chance of obtaining asylum in the EU,” she insisted.

(Anne-Sophie Gayet | EURACTIV.com)