ECHR grants majority of requests from illegal migrants asking not to be sent back to Belarus from EU – document

PARIS. Dec 7 (Interfax) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has granted the majority of lawsuits lodged since August 2021 by illegal migrants, who asked not to be sent back to Belarus from the European Union.

These are interim measures valid for a limited period of time, during which the authorities of these countries will have to figure out whether these illegal migrants have grounds to apply for asylum there.

The ECHR said that between 20 August and 3 December 2021, the court processed a total of 47 requests for interim measures brought by a total of 198 applicants. These people have got into Poland, Lithuania and Latvia via Belarus over the past few months. Forty-four of those requests were lodged against Poland, with one request being lodged against Lithuania and two against Latvia.

The court has granted 43 of the 47 requests.

"In the majority of applications, where the applicants claimed to be in Poland and asked not to be pushed back to Belarus," the document said. The ECHR ruled in such cases that "the applicants should not be removed from Poland if they were indeed on Polish territory."

The migrants also asked the ECHR to order the EU countries to provide them with temporary accommodation, medical care, clothes, drinking water, and food supplies.

Subsequently, the court overturned a number of its rulings after finding that they had become irrelevant for these or those reasons.

"As of 3 December 2021, interim measures indicated by the court were in force in 28 applications, all of which were lodged against Poland," it said.