The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that European Union member states are not allowed to kick asylum seekers out of asylum homes even if they have been violent in the past.
The ruling comes after a case involving an Afghan migrant in Belgium who had been involved in a fight between other migrants in an asylum home and was kicked out of the home for 15 days, during which he lived on the streets of Brussels or with his friends, Kronen Zeitung reports.
The ECJ ruled that the decision to remove the Afghan, even if just temporarily, was a violation of EU law and that a 2013 regulation on refugees banned such penalities for offences, even if they were violent.
The court went on to say that basic needs for asylum seekers must be met, “permanently and without interruption,” and said it was not good enough that the asylum home gave the migrant a list of homeless shelters he could visit.
While the judges on the court banned the action of the asylum home, they said it was still permissible for EU member states to imprison migrants for offences or to move them to other asylum accommodations.
