Dublin III

On inner-european Deportations.

Last update : February 2016

The Danish Immigration Service is responsible for handling your Dublin case. You can appeal Dublin decisions before you are transferred. You have 7 days to appeal the decision after it has been made. For your appeal you have access to free legal aid by ‘Dansk Flygtningehjælp’ (Danish Refugee Council). The appeal will be handled by The Refugee Appeals Board (Flygtningenævnet).


The main rule of the Dublin III Regulation is that your application for asylum is handled by one, and only one, country. The decision is normally based on which country you have been registered in and had your fingerprints taken the first time, but can also depend on other cicumstances such as family ties.

Fingerprints : If you meet the police when you enter the EU, they will take your fingerprints if you are more than 14 years old, and transfer them to a shared database called Eurodac. Here your fingerprints will be saved for ten years if you seek asylum and two years if you don’t seek asylum and just pass through the country. If you choose to try to seek asylum in another country than the one where you have had your fingerprints registered, the authorities will most likely send you back to the country where you are registered. That means that once you have had your fingerprints taken you no longer have a choice about where to submit your application for asylum.

The cooperation between EU countries of comparing fingerprints is effective and is very hard to escape. However there are a few ways to become detached from your country of registration. If you leave the Dublin III area for more than 3 months you can apply for asylum again in any Dublin country. However you have to prove that you have been outside EU in the period. Proving that you have been outside the EU can be hard and must be well thought through, as it is completely necessary for this strategy to work. If you cannot be sent back to the first country you were registered, because you have been underground in Denmark, the responsibility is moved to Denmark after 18 months. This is 18 months after, the other EU country had originally accepted the Dublin-transfer of your case, meaning that you would be deported from Denmark to the other EU country. If you appeal the decision of the Dublin-transfer, the 18 month period is counted from the time, when the Refugee Appeals Board has responded to the appeal.

The Danish Immigration Service is responsible for handling your Dublin case.

You can appeal Dublin decisions before you are transferred. You have 7 days to appeal the decision after it has been made. For your appeal you have access to free legal aid by ‘Dansk Flygtningehjælp’ (Danish Refugee Council). The appeal will be handled by The Refugee Appeals Board (Flygtningenævnet).

You have to be informed about the Dublin process before it starts, and then have a formal interview with an interpreter to find out facts relevant to the process. This will normally be part of the first interview where you are also asked about your reasons to claim asylum.

In general, you should not be detained just because there is a plan for a Dublin transfer; you should only be detained if there is a “significant risk of absconding”. In other words if the authorities have reason to believe that you will hide from them. Unfortunately, they will often use this as a reason to detain you.

From the decision about the Dublin transfer has been made, the authorities have 6 months to deport you to the country where you have your Dublin (counts from the date they answer to your appeal, if you appeal the first decision). If you can’t be deported because you are in prison, they have 12 months to deport you. If you go under ground they have 18 months to find and deport you. After this time the country where they want to deport you to, do not have the responsibility to deal with your asylum claim any longer.

The country where you are present has (generally speaking) 3 months, from the time that an asylum-seeker comes to their attention, in which they can make a Dublin transfer request to another EU country. Under Dublin III if the reason for the transfer is a fingerprint match under Eurodac, this is reduced to 2 months. Someone might get lucky and have an Immigration Service official who doesn’t act quickly enough.

If you are irregular in Denmark, and have claimed asylum in another Dublin country but not in Denmark, you can also be subjected to a Dublin deportation.

In the Dublin regulation it states that a country is not allowed to transfer you to another country where the asylum system has collapsed.

Danish authorities can in exceptional circumstances eg, for humanitarian reasons choose to asses your application even though you are registered in another EU country. If you think there are such extraordinary circumstances in your case, contact a lawyer or a legal counselling group to help you appeal the decision. Look at the contact list.

Since January 2011 Denmark has stopped Dublin deportations to Greece.

The Tarakhel (from 4.11.2014) concluded that there must be a guarantie for adequate conditions for families with children, if they are deported to Italy. The pratical consequences of this has not been clarified so far (January 2016).

Dublin practice regarding Hungary is unclear at the moment. So far dublin-deportations to Hungary have been suspended, while an inquiry is taking place (January 2016).