Court the first opportunity

[chandonar0]

M.N. and Others v Belgium, however, did offer the to rule on the relevance of Article 3 and the therein implied non-refoulement obligation, to visa applications at embassies. Could the ECtHR, however, expand the extraterritorial reach of the non-refoulement obligation to such an extent, given the strong opposition by states (many of whom phone number list submitted third-party comments), the explicit rejection by states to accept such an obligation as a matter of European law and the X. and X.

Belgium judgment (where, as argued by Spijkerboer, as a matter of formal legal argumentation the CJEU could have easier reached a different conclusion under EU law)? In this sense, the outcome could be assessed as expected (see also Baumgärtel who also assesses it as expected).

Once triggered, the non-refoulement obligation does imply a whole set of procedural guarantees (the issuing of humanitarian visas raises a gamut of legal and practical problems.). In this sense, the jurisdictional hurdle posed by Article 1 ECHR was the way to avoid ‘passing the boundary of material justice’ (see Noll). I would like to focus on two aspects of the ECtHR’s assessment as to the issue of jurisdiction in M.N. and Others v Belgium: the first one concerns ‘public powers’ and the second one concerns ‘actions and omissions of diplomatic and consular officials’.