Constitutional Court decides:

Deportations to Afghanistan possible again

Asylum seekers deported from Europe often land at Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport.

(Bild: APA/AFP/DOMINIQUE FAGET)

Deportations to Afghanistan are now possible again. This was decided by the Constitutional Court (VfGH) in a recent case. An Afghan migrant whose application for international protection had been rejected had filed a complaint.

The man had left his country of origin in 2022 and applied for international protection in Austria. He later tried to do the same in Switzerland, but was also rejected. In Austria, the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum then granted him subsidiary protection. However, deportation was declared permissible. The man appealed against this to the Constitutional Court, which, however, ruled in favor of the administrative court. There were no "gross procedural errors", it said. 

The Federal Administrative Court did not interpret the law in a way that violated fundamental rights, nor did it make any gross procedural errors.

Der Verfassungsgerichtshof zur Entscheidung

"Changed security situation"
The Federal Administrative Court had argued that the security situation in Afghanistan had changed. The lives and integrity of the people in the country were no longer threatened by international or domestic conflicts. This was comprehensible to the Supreme Court.

It was also taken into account that the migrant's family owns a farm and several cultivated plots of land in the capital Kabul. The complainant himself had described his family's economic situation as good immediately before his departure.

Not always applicable
However, this finding is not always applicable. It depends on the individual case. Nevertheless, the status quo is now expected to change. Since summer 2021, deportations in Afghanistan have been virtually impossible. Only recently, the UN had advised against it, arguing that the situation of the population had deteriorated.