Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania: Unlawful restriction of access to an asylum file
2025 01 08
On 8 January 2025, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania (case No. eA-410-821/2025) annulled a decision of the Migration Department refusing to provide an asylum seeker’s legal representative with interview transcripts and other materials from the asylum file. The Court held that the authority had misapplied point 192 of the Description of the Procedure for Granting and Revoking Asylum and failed to properly justify how disclosure of the requested information would undermine the ongoing examination of the asylum claim. The Court stressed that neither Lithuanian law nor Directive 2013/32/EU establishes an automatic or blanket prohibition on granting access to interview records during first-instance asylum proceedings. Any restriction of access must be reasoned, proportionate, and based on the individual circumstances of the case. The Migration Department was ordered to reassess the request, with the Court underlining the importance of good administration, the right to defence, and the right of access to one’s case file.