The General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) has asked the Ministry of Justice to authorize the reinforcement of the Chamber of the National High Court in charge of asylum and refuge requests.

The Court requested the measure from the Council after this type of procedure multiplied by eight compared to the 2020 figures.

The proposed measures provide for the

Contentious-Administrative Chamber to

issue 3,200 more sentences per month during an initial extendable period of half a year.

According to the Permanent Commission of the Council, it is the way to avoid "the collapse" or the appearance of "very serious difficulties" in the Chamber, which is in a "worrying" situation.

Despite the war in Ukraine, cases from that country are not the problem.

Currently, the Ministry of the Interior is granting protection to all those from that country, so no resources are generated that must be resolved by the High Court.

In fact, the processing of cases in Ukraine has even been simplified, because what was already in the hands of the court is being resolved favorably, with the State Attorney's Office accepting all the petitions that it had opposed.

Requests from Ukrainians did reach a considerable percentage after the Crimean crisis in 2014, but over the years they subsided.

Humanitarian reasons

The bulk of the requests for asylum or humanitarian protection that have arrived in the last year correspond to Colombian nationals, followed by Venezuelans.

The situation caused by the Nicolás Maduro regime has led to the Venezuelans leading the requests in recent years, but they have been unseated, at least on the judicial front, by the Colombians.

Requests from nationals of Honduras, Peru and Nicaragua have also grown substantially.

In the case of Venezuela, the situation was alleviated when, following the criteria established by the High Court, the Interior generalized the granting of subsidiary protection which, apart from the more restricted asylum, is also included in the law and which allows permanence in Spain for humanitarian reasons. .

The spectacular increase in cases has been added is also due in part, according to legal sources, to the fact that the Interior has reinforced the staff that resolves these issues.

This has generated many more issues that are resolved in the administrative sphere and can now be appealed in court.

The same sources indicate that the increase in Interior resolutions has been supported by resolutions that give generalized answers to particular cases, which after the appeal requires a more detailed examination of each matter.

two solutions

To manage the flood of cases that despite everything reach the Court after the refusals of the Interior to the requests, the Council proposes two ways.

One of them consists of a group of eight magistrates from the Court's Contentious Chamber itself being in charge of issuing at least a dozen additional sentences a week, totaling 40 monthly.

They would receive a remuneration of 80% of the destination complement of the Chamber, an expense that requires the approval of Justice.

Subsidiarily, the CGPJ requests that the reinforcement measure be integrated, in whole or in part, through service commissions without relief of duties in favor of magistrates who are not part of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National High Court, prior summons public.

The measure should include a reinforcement of the Secretariat of the Chamber consisting of three more officials (a manager and two processors) for the processing of the matters covered by the emergency plan.

An increase of 812%

According to the data offered by the Council, in 2021 a total of 9,146 new asylum and refugee cases reached the Court, which represents an increase of 812% compared to 2020 and 711% compared to 2019. Added to the cases relating to other matters, have caused "a very important increase in the pool of pending cases", which at the end of the year were close to 30,000.

The figure represents an average of 3,637 cases per section -there are eight in the Chamber- and 709.6 cases per magistrate, "a workload is well above the indicator established for this body".

The CGPJ describes as "worrying" the situation of accumulation of matters related to asylum and refuge in the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National High Court and considers that, if support measures are not adopted, the bag of unresolved cases could still rise more so given the growing rate of entry of this type of matter as a result of the important reinforcement measures adopted for its resolution through administrative channels.

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  • General Council of the Judiciary

  • Ukraine

  • Venezuela

  • Nicaragua

  • Peru

  • Nicholas Maduro

  • Colombia

  • Ministry of Interior

  • National audience