A major pillar of the European Union's asylum law was dealt a blow Friday as Europe's top human rights court rebuked Belgium for knowingly exposing an Afghan would-be refugee to the failings of the system in fellow EU-member Greece, dpa reported. Belgian authorities repatriated the man known as M.S.S. to Greece in June 2009, in application of the Dublin II regulation - the EU law which states that asylum requests should be handled by the first EU country migrants enter into. But judges at the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said authorities failed to acknowledge the "well known and freely ascertainable" deficiencies in the Greek asylum system, and in so doing violated the European Convention on Human Rights. The ECHR stressed that "under the (EU) regulation, Belgium could have made an exception and refused the ... transfer." In a statement, the head of the European Council for Refugees and Exiles, a non-governmental organization, said the ruling was "a major blow to the Dublin system." "The assumption that all EU member states respect fundamental rights and that it is therefore safe to automatically transfer asylum seekers between EU countries no longer stands," Bjarte Vandvik charged. Human rights activists have long called for a review of Dublin II, which as currently used, means a large percentage of asylum case fall upon Mediterranean countries. Several Northern European countries have stopped deporting immigrants to Greece because of reports of crowded conditions at processing centres there. EU Home Affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said the ECHR ruling "clearly shows the EU's need to urgently establish a Common European Asylum System" - something the bloc's leaders pledged to achieve by 2012. She said the European Commission wants to amend Dublin II by introducing "an emergency mechanism for suspending transfers" when individual countries are overwhelmed, like in the case of Greece, and called upon EU countries and the EU parliament to support the change. In the meantime, the EU executive will "continue" to help Greece with aid and technical assistance. The country is struggling to handle flows of irregular migrants, as well as of asylum seekers. The ECHR is an organ of the Council of Europe - a human rights watchdog which is unrelated to the EU, but which all EU states are members of. Its ruling - which is final - ordered Belgium to pay 24,900 euros (34,000 dollars) in moral damages and 7,350 euros in legal costs to the Afghan asylum seeker. Greece was also ordered to pay 1,000 euros in moral damages and 4,725 euros in legal costs. -- SPA
