The Supreme Administrative Court upheld the OPU’s long-held view that the Ministry of the Interior cannot refuse to accept applications for temporary protection from citizens of Ukraine solely on the grounds that they have already been granted such protection in the past in another Member State.
Link to the judgment of the Supreme Administrative Court here: https://www.nssoud.cz/modalni-obsah/rozhodovaci-cinnost/rozhodnuti-401296-anonymizovana-verze?cHash=312b3ec0f56b6eef1f9e9e921a3d1c1e
The OPU represented a deaf citizen of Ukraine who had come from Ukraine to Poland at the beginning of the war, where, according to his own words, he signed the papers they presented to him after crossing the border. However, he did not know that by doing so he was applying for temporary protection in Poland. His subsequent application for temporary protection in the Czech Republic was refused by the Ministry. The Regional Court, following an action brought by the OPU on behalf of the client, found this procedure to be unlawful. The Supreme Administrative Court has now reached the same conclusion.
In another similar case, it first referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union a preliminary question concerning the compatibility of Czech legislation on the inadmissibility of requests for temporary protection with EU law. In its February judgment in Case C-753/23, Krasiliva, the Court ruled that temporary protection cannot be refused to refugees who have applied for temporary protection in another country before arriving in the Czech Republic and have not yet obtained it. The Supreme Administrative Court has now added that an application submitted by a refugee who has previously obtained temporary protection in another country cannot be considered inadmissible. Under European legislation, persons under temporary protection have the right to choose the Member State in which they wish to reside, even during the period of protection. If they decide to move to another country and renounce their previous authorisation, the new country cannot refuse to issue them with a new residence permit.
In this decision, the Czech Supreme Administrative Court upheld the OPU, which has been pointing out from the beginning that the Czech legislation on the inadmissibility of requests for temporary protection is incompatible with EU law. The Public Defender of Rights and the majority of administrative courts have long held the same legal opinion. However, the Ministry of the Interior still refused to consider applications from Ukrainian citizens who had already obtained temporary protection elsewhere in the EU, which has led to dozens of court cases and has also brought significant compilations to the lives of refugees from Ukraine. For example, they have been unable to work or take out health insurance all this time. The judgment will thus have a major impact on the practice of the Ministry of the Interior in other similar cases.