The Weekly Round Up: “Indications” of Israel’s breach of human rights obligations to EU; Article 10 ECHR on campus; “Safe third countries” in the Court of Appeal
23 June 2025
In the news
The EU’s diplomatic service has warned of “indications” that Israel’s activities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank are “in breach of [its] human rights obligations” to the Union under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. The report, due to be presented on 23 June to the foreign ministers of Member States by Kaja Kallas, High Representative of the EU’s Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is based on “facts verified by and assessments made by independent international institutions”. It follows an audit pushed forward last month by 17 Member States, led by the Netherlands. The Agreement, which came into force in 2000, provides for free trade arrangements between the two parties, currently worth over 42 billion euros a year in goods, and a further c. 35 billion euros in services: the EU is Israel’s top commercial partner. Article 2 of the Agreement states that “Relations between the Parties, as well as the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of the Agreement.” Suspending the Agreement would require the unanimous consent of the EU’s 27 Member States.
The UK Office for Students (OfS) has issued new “free speech” guidelines to universities in England, effectively prohibiting blanket bans on student protests, and putting substantial brakes on the penalisation of students and staff exercising lawful speech. The guidelines anticipate and purport to give clarity to the provisions of delayed Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, now revised and due to come into force this August. The OfS’s new “three step” approach requires universities to take “reasonably practical steps” to “secure free speech” which is “within the law” (= Steps 1 and 2): where this is not possible, it must run a proportionality assessment on any interferences to free speech, following Article 10(2) of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) (= Step 3). The National Union for Students has dismissed the guidance as “just more nonsense playing into the so-called ‘culture wars’”, with the new regulations failing to the prioritise “protecting and supporting marginalised students.”
In the courts
The Court of Appeal has held that an asylum applicant’s fears of being returned to a jurisdiction which was not a “safe third country” or “safe third State” only affected his rights to appeal if the application were deemed inadmissible: it was “immaterial” to the assessment of an application once admitted. In AAZA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 705, a Yemeni national appealed against the Upper Tribunal’s decision to uphold the Home Secretary’s refusal of his asylum application. The appellant, who had lived in China since the age of one but did not have Chinese nationality, claimed that there had been an error of law in the Tribunal’s allowing his appeal on humanitarian protection grounds with regard to Yemen, but not on humanitarian protection and human rights grounds with regard to China. The appellant argued that, since China was not listed as a “safe third country” under Schedule 3 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, the UK was in breach of its obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, and in contravention of his rights under ECHR Article 3 (prohibition of torture), following the provisions concerning return to a “safe third State” under Part 4A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Bean LJ held that these statutory provisions did not apply to the instant case: “whether a state is a “safe third State” within this new provision only affects rights of appeal”, something not disputed here. The applicant’s risk of ill-treatment if returned to China therefore had to be decided on the basis of evidence relating to his own circumstances. Bean LJ found that the First Tier Tribunal “gave entirely adequate reasons for finding that the test was not satisfied” by the evidence of AAZA, who had spent virtually his whole life in China before coming to the UK as a student: “there was no error of law.” However, the Court held that the appellant might still apply to have his application reconsidered by the Home Secretary, if he could submit fresh evidence that he was at a risk of refoulement from China to Yemen.
