After the great refugee movement of 2015, family reunification became a buzzword in the refugee debate. Critics fueled the fear that behind each and every refugee there was a large family waiting to enter Germany. Such scenarios have not come true. However, such applications are still often handled slowly by German authorities, so that minors affected become of legal age before a decision is made. Consequence: The application is rejected because adult children are not entitled to be reunited with their families. Now the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has decided that such a practice undermines the meaning and purpose of refugee protection and violates European fundamental rights.
In one case, a young woman from Syria who had been living in Turkey for years had applied for a visa in order to be able to move to Germany with her father. He came to Germany in 2015 and applied for asylum the following year – the daughter was still 17 years old. But when the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) recognized him as a refugee, it was 2017 and the daughter was already 18. She immediately applied for family reunification, but was rejected. There is no family reunification for adults.
The ECJ had already signaled in judgments of 2018 and 2020 that it should not be left to the asylum authorities to hesitantly process applications and simply leave such cases until the 18th birthday of the young people in need of protection and thus undermine the entitlement. Nevertheless, the Federal Administrative Court still saw a need for clarification and asked the ECJ what point in time should be used for the question of minors.
The date of the asylum application is decisive
The ECJ’s answer is clear: The decisive factor is the date on which the refugee father submitted his asylum application. And not the day of the daughter’s visa application, which she cannot submit before the father in Germany has received his decision. The Court of Justice provides a very practical consideration of bureaucratic and political resistance in dealing with refugees: According to its assessment, “the competent national authorities and courts would otherwise have no reason to process the applications of the parents of minors with the necessary urgency … as a priority”. . However, this endangers the respect for family life guaranteed in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the protection of minor children.
Official delaying tactics must not be rewarded, that is to say. This also applies in the opposite case, when children bring parents to catch up, as the ECJ ruled in a second judgment. There, three young Syrians came to Germany as unaccompanied minors – and their parents applied for family reunification from abroad. The sons were recognized as refugees but had now come of age, so the German authorities rejected the parents’ application for family reunification. According to the ECJ, the following also applies here: The decisive factor is that the children were still minors when they themselves submitted their application for refugee status. At the same time, however, the court emphasizes in both cases that the application for subsequent immigration must be made within three months of the recognition.
The refugee organization “Pro Asyl” sees the judgments as a great victory. According to the authorities’ previous logic, “the families are paying for the fact that the German bureaucracy works so slowly.” The federal government must now take the “necessary steps to accelerate family reunification”. According to the findings of the organization, the waiting times alone until an application is submitted to the German diplomatic missions are 12 to 18 months. And this is followed by another, often lengthy, procedure.
The judgments of the ECJ only apply to cases of recognition of refugee status, not to the so-called “subsidiary protection” that is often granted to refugees from civil wars. For this group, Germany initially suspended family reunification in 2016 and capped it at 1,000 per month from the summer of 2018.
The ECJ has also clarified what the term “actual family ties” means – which is another prerequisite for family reunification. According to the ECJ, the mere relationship in a direct line is not sufficient. On the other hand, the requirements should not be too strict here. Occasional visits and regular contacts are sufficient to make such ties plausible.