OPU case succeeded at the Supreme Administrative Court. The Supreme Administrative Court has sided with the long-standing opinion of the OPU (Organization for Aid to Refugees), stating that the Ministry of the Interior cannot refuse to accept applications for temporary protection from Ukrainian citizens solely on the grounds that they have already been granted such protection in another member state.
The OPU represented a Ukrainian citizen with hearing disability (complete loss of hearing) who arrived in Poland from Ukraine at the beginning of the war. According to his statement, he signed papers presented to him after crossing the border but was unaware that he was applying for temporary protection in Poland. The Ministry subsequently refused to consider his application for temporary protection in the Czech Republic. Based on a lawsuit filed by the OPU on behalf of the client, the Regional Court deemed this procedure unlawful. The Supreme Administrative Court has now reached the same conclusion.
In another similar case, the Supreme Administrative Court first turned to the Court of Justice of the European Union with a preliminary question regarding the compatibility of the Czech legal regulation on the inadmissibility of applications for temporary protection with Union law. In its February ruling in case C-753/23, Krasiliva, the Court of Justice held that temporary protection cannot be refused to those refugees who 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 either. According to European regulations, 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 state and renounce their previous permit, the new state cannot refuse to issue them a new residence permit.
With this decision, the Supreme Administrative Court has sided with the OPU, which has been pointing out the conflict between the Czech legal regulation on the inadmissibility of applications for temporary protection and Union law from the beginning. 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 assess applications from Ukrainian citizens who had previously obtained temporary protection elsewhere in the EU. This led to dozens of lawsuits and also caused significant complications in the lives of refugees from Ukraine. For example, they were unable to work or receive health insurance for the entire duration. The ruling will therefore have a fundamental impact on the practice of the Ministry of the Interior in other similar cases.
Link to the Supreme Administrative Court’s ruling here: https://www.nssoud.cz/