On 24 April 2024, the Refugee Board published a decision to suspend the processing of cases concerning transfers under the Dublin Regulation to Croatia and await a new individual guarantee in three specific cases from the Croatian authorities that the applicants' asylum applications will be processed in Croatia in accordance with Croatia's EU law and other international obligations. In September 2024, the Danish Immigration Service sent a guarantee response from the Croatian authorities.
The Refugee Board's Coordination Committee decided at a meeting on 16 January 2025 that the newly obtained individual guarantee in the specific cases could not serve as a general guarantee when processing other cases of Dublin transfer to Croatia, and decided on this basis to contact the Danish Immigration Service with a view to clarifying whether the Croatian authorities could issue a general guarantee that all asylum seekers transferred from Denmark to Croatia under the Dublin Regulation will be processed in Croatia in accordance with the country's EU law and other international obligations. The Refugee Board has not received such a guarantee at this time.
The Refugee Board's Coordination Committee has therefore decided to resume the processing of cases concerning transfers under the Dublin Regulation to Croatia. This concerns approximately 60 individual cases. At the same time, after an overall assessment of, among other things, the progress, the nature of the cases and the considerations in the Dublin Regulation regarding rapid determination of responsibility, the Committee has decided, pursuant to Article 17(1) of the Dublin Regulation, to reverse cases forwarded to the Refugee Board before the Board's publication on 24 April 2024 of the decision to suspend the processing of the cases.
With regard to cases forwarded to the board after the publication of the decision on suspension, the coordination committee has decided as a general rule to return these for the purpose of the Immigration Service's position on whether the cases in question should now be processed on the merits in this country, including whether the deadline for transfer would have been missed if the board, in accordance with the Refugee Board's decision on suspension, had failed to make a decision in the cases and forward them to the board. In the above decision, the Refugee Board has not considered the current background information on the asylum procedure and reception and accommodation conditions in Croatia.