Three main cases have been reported by the Upper Tribunal between December 2015 and February 2016 in relation to the interpretation of regulation 24AA certification as well as the regulation 29AA permission re- entry procedure.
The relevant cases are:
- R (on the application of Kasicky) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Reg 29AA: interpretation) IJR [2016] UKUT 00107 (IAC) – this was a judicial review claim in relation to a Slovakan national, concerned with whether the Secretary of State’s decision to refuse the Applicant permission to re-enter the United Kingdom, pursuant to regulation 29AA, to attend his appeal hearing was lawful;
- Gheorghiu (reg 24AA EEA Regs – relevant factors) [2016] UKUT 00024 (IAC)- this concerned a Romanian national’ s deportation appeal case; his case having been certified under regulation 24AA and the appellant having been removed from the UK, his appeal was heard in his absence. The Upper Tribunal however gave some indication of the factors a Judge would take due account of in an application to suspend certification enabling pre-appeal removal in an EEA case.
- R (on the application of Masalskas) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Regulations 24AA and 29AA EEA Regs) IJR [2015] UKUT 00677 (IAC) -the Applicant was a citizen of Lithuania who sought judicial review of the decision made by the Secretary of State to certify his removal from the United Kingdom under regulation 24AA of the 2006 Regulations. On the same day that the Applicant applied for judicial review he also applied for an interim injunction to prevent removal( 17 March 2015). This was granted and it was ordered that the Secretary of State was not to remove the Applicant until determination of the judicial review application or further order. The applicant had earlier (in January 2015) lodged a statutory appeal against the EEA decision to make a deportation order against him. At the date he brought his judicial review proceedings his statutory appeal was still pending. His deportation appeal was however dismissed by the First Tier Tribunal whilst the judicial review proceedings were awaiting a decision on permission. An application for permission to appeal was lodged in the First Tier Tribunal. The Applicant was subsequently granted permission for judicial review by the Upper Tribunal. By the time the Applicant’s judicial review claim was heard in October 2015, the Applicant still had a pending application for permission to appeal in the First Tier Tribunal.
The decisions in Kasicky, Gheorghiu were in themselves positive as to the outcome sought in the individual cases when compared to Masalskas. It is noteworthy however that although these three cases were published very closely to each other, none of the two mentioned cases published after Masalskas refer to that case. The considerations in this regards are set out in the concluding part of this article.
Continue reading on my analysis of the three cases dealing with Regulation 24AA and 29AA of the EEA Regulations 2006