F.A.Y. A OSTATNÍ proti Řecku

FIFTH SECTION

DECISION

Applications nos. 26657/16 and 36423/16
F.A.Y. and Others against Greece
and E.A.B. and Others against Greece

The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 12 February 2026 as a Committee composed of:

María Elósegui, President,
Gilberto Felici,
Diana Sârcu, judges,
and Sophie Piquet, Acting Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the applications against the Hellenic Republic lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by the applicants listed in the appended table (“the applicants”), on the dates indicated therein;

the decision to give notice to the Greek Government (“the Government”) of the complaints concerning living conditions in unofficial and official refugee camps, provision of medical services, access to asylum procedure in Greece and family reunification procedures in other European countries and the decision to declare inadmissible the remainder of the applications;

the parties’ observations;

the decisions of 13 June, 21 July 2016 and 26 January 2017 in the application no. 26657/16 and of 29 June 2016 in the application no. 36423/16 to refuse to indicate to the Greek Government the interim measures sought by the applicants under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court;

the decision under Rule 47 § 4 of the Rules of Court to grant anonymity of the Court’s own motion and under Rule 33 § 1 to treat the case documents as confidential;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1. The applicants in the present case are Syrian nationals, who fled their country and arrived in Greece in early 2016. The applications concern their living conditions in the unofficial refugee transit camps of Idomeni and EKO at the border of Greece and North Macedonia, as well as in official refugee facilities, provision of medical services, access to asylum procedure in Greece and family reunification procedures with the applicants’ families in other European countries.

PROCEDURE

2. Having regard to the similar subject matter of the applications, the Court finds it appropriate to examine them jointly in a single decision.

3. After giving notice of the applicants’ complaints to the respondent Government and the exchange of observations between the parties, the applicants’ representatives (indicated in the appended table) were requested to inform the Court about the applicants’ whereabouts and whether they wished to maintain their applications. Their attention has been drawn to the Grand Chamber’s findings in the judgment in the case of V.M. and Others v. Belgium (striking out) [GC] (no. 60125/11, 17 November 2016).

4. In the application no. 26657/16 the representative, by the letters of 25 October 2021 and 24 July 2024, informed the Court that a) the applicants nos. 4, 7, 13 and 16 (indicated by asterisk in the appended table) resided in Germany and wished to maintain their applications and b) that the applicant no. 2 died in 2019 and that her daughter Ms. S. wished to pursue the application (providing no document confirming her status as an heir or her relation to the applicant). No submissions had been made in respect of the contact with the other applicants or of the reason for the lack of it.

5. In the application no. 36423/16 the representative, by the letter of 2 January 2024, informed the Court that the applicants nos. 9, 10 and 13 (indicated by asterisk in the appended table) resided in Ireland or Sweden and wished to maintain their applications. No submissions had been made in respect of the contact with the other applicants or of the reason for the lack of it.

6. The Court, having regard to the Grand Chamber’s findings in the case of V.M. and Others v. Belgium (ibid, §§ 35-36) and the above information, concludes that the representatives no longer maintain contact with the applicants nos. 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17 in the application no. 26657/16 and with the applicants nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 in the application no. 36423/16. Therefore, these applicants can be regarded as no longer intending to pursue their application. Accordingly, in this part the present applications must be struck out of the list of cases under Article 37 § 1 (a) of the Convention.

7. As regards the applicant no. 2 in the application no. 26657/16, the Court notes that while Ms S. expressed her wish to pursue the proceedings, in the following six years she provided no document confirming her status as an heir or her relation to the deceased applicant. Having regard to the Grand Chamber’s findings in the case of Léger v. France (striking out) [GC] (no. 19324/02, §§ 50-51, 30 March 2009), the Court concludes that it is no longer justified to continue the examination of the application no. 26657/16 in part concerning the applicant no. 2. Accordingly, this part of the application must be struck out of the list of cases under Article 37 § 1 (c) of the Convention.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

1. The context

8. In 2014-2016 significant number of migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria used the so-called “Balkan route” – via Türkiye, Greece, North Macedonia and Serbia – to reach the countries of Western and Northern Europe and seek asylum there. While initially the countries along the route mostly permitted the migrants to pass through, the growing concern about the massive influx of asylum seekers into the European Union had led to measures aimed to stop it.

9. Followings meetings and talks at the EU level and involving the countries on the route, the authorities of North Macedonia since the end of 2015 progressively introduced restrictions on entry of migrants at the border with Greece. On 8 March 2016 a decision entered into force not to allow the entry and controlled transit through North Macedonia of migrants, who did not meet the requirements for entry or did not seek asylum in that country.

10. Given the scale of the migratory activity at the time, the abovementioned progressively introduced restrictions had led to rapid accumulation of thousands of persons at several entry points at the border of Greece and North Macedonia. In response, between September and November 2015, the unofficial transit camps of Idomeni and EKO had been created though the joint effort of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Red Cross and various other international, regional and national NGOs operating on the ground.

11. The camps of Idomeni and EKO had limited capacity and were only intended to serve as short-term facilities for the individuals wishing to cross the border. However, the progressive closure of the border and the continuous incoming traffic of migrants had rapidly resulted in overflow with the actual number of residents surpassing the nominal capacity several times. The conditions in the camps deteriorated beyond control and had been uniformly characterised as deplorable (see, for example, Sh.D. and Others v. Greece, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia, no. 14165/16, §§ 31-34, 13 June 2019).

12. The camps had not been managed by the Greek authorities and the migrants had never been officially placed in or directed towards them. On the contrary, in the view of the above conditions an operation relocating several thousand migrants was carried out in December 2015 and the camps were definitevely evacuated by the police in May – June 2016.

2. The complaint under Article 3 about the living conditions in Idomeni and EKO camps

13. It is not disputed by the parties that the applicants arrived to the Greek islands on various dates in February and March 2016, got registered by the police authorities and received temporary ‘no return’ decisions precluding their removal from Greece. It is further not disputed by the parties that eventually in June 2016 the applicants had been placed in official accommodation facilities, which – after varying periods of time – they left for Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

14. The applicants in their submissions alleged that after arrival to Greece they made their way to Idomeni and EKO camps, where they found themselves in the conditions incompatible with Article 3 of the Convention.

15. The Government objected stating that Idomeni and EKO were not official facilities, that the authorities had not been responsible for them, that migrants resided in the camps voluntarily and that in any event there is no proof that the applicants had been individually present in the camps and for what duration.

16. The general principles concerning the burden and standard of proof in migration and asylum-related proceedings — including cases involving vulnerable applicants and allegations of ill-treatment — have been summarised in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia (dec.) [GC], nos. 8019/16 and 2 others, §§ 435-439, 30 November 2022; El-Masri v. the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia [GC], no. 39630/09, § 151, ECHR 2012; and N.D. and N.T. v. Spain [GC], nos. 8675/15 and 8697/15, § 85, 13 February 2020.

17. The level of persuasion necessary for reaching a particular conclusion and the distribution of the burden of proof are intrinsically linked to the specificity of the facts, the nature of the allegations made and the Convention right at stake (see Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia, cited above, § 439). However, the standard of proof applied by the Court in Article 3 cases is “proof beyond reasonable doubt”, which may follow from the coexistence of sufficiently strong, clear and concordant inferences or of similar unrebutted presumptions of fact (see El-Masri, cited above, § 151). The applicants must in all cases provide a detailed, specific and consistent account of the relevant events, as well as such evidence as they may reasonably be expected to be able to furnish in the circumstances, or give a satisfactory explanation for not being able to do so (see M.H. and Others v. Croatia, nos. 15670/18 and 43115/18, §§ 269-273, 18 November 2021; A.A. and Others v. North Macedonia, nos. 55798/16 and 4 others, § 55, 5 April 2022).

18. In A.R.E. v. Greece (no. 15783/21, §§ 298-301, 7 January 2025), the Court, while recognising the inherent difficulty of producing direct evidence in refoulement contexts, held that the applicant had failed to submit precise and concordant material establishing the alleged violations beyond reasonable doubt. Similarly, in G.R.J. v. Greece ((dec.), no. 15067/21, §§ 217 and 223, 3 December 2024), the Court found that the applicant had not adduced a sufficient body of evidence to substantiate his presence in Greece or his alleged pushback to Türkiye.

19. The Court considers the above principles to be pertinent for the cases at hand. Accordingly, it will proceed to examine whether the applicants provided a detailed, specific and consistent account of the relevant events, supported by precise and concordant material establishing the alleged violations beyond reasonable doubt.

20. Turning to the present cases, it must be observed at the outset that the evidence in the case files proves with requisite certainty – if not precision ‑the dates of the applicants’ entry in Greece in February-March 2016, the issuance of ‘no return’ decision by the police, and admission into the official refugee structures in June 2016. However, nothing in the same case files, except for the applicants’ own declarations, allows to establish with any degree of certitude whether all of the applicants had been ever present in Idomeni and EKO camps, the dates on which they entered and left these camps, whether they continuously stayed in them and for what periods of time. The substantiation advanced by the applicants’ representatives in their submissions before this Court – including references to faxes allegedly originating from the camps, screenshots of GPS coordinates, video recordings of calls to authorities, some photographs of the camps and with volunteers ‑ for the most part cannot be reliably linked to the applicants personally and, in any event, are incapable of proving beyond the reasonable doubt the scope, duration and conditions of the applicants’ alleged stay in the unofficial camps.

21. The Court is well aware of the deplorable living conditions in the unofficial camps at the Greek-North Macedonian border during the applicants’ alleged stay there in 2016. However, before considering to what degree the authorities could be held responsible for these conditions, the Court must satisfy itself that the treatment alleged by the applicants attained a minimum level of severity for it to fall within the scope of Article 3 (see Muršić v. Croatia [GC], no. 7334/13, § 97, 20 October 2016). The assessment of this minimum is relative and depends on all the circumstances of the case, including the duration of the treatment, its physical and mental effects and, in some cases, the sex, age and state of health of the alleged victim. In absence of a detailed, specific and consistent evidence regarding the scope, duration and conditions of the applicants stay in the camps and of the lack of relevant precise and concordant supporting material, it is impossible to establish whether the alleged treatment attained the requisite level of severity.

22. Accordingly, the Court finds, in the light of all the material in its possession and in so far as the matters complained of are within its competence, that the applicants’ complaints under Article 3 of the Convention about living conditions in the unofficial camps of Idomeni and EKO do not meet the admissibility criteria set out in Articles 34 and 35 of the Convention. It follows that this part of the applications must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.

3. Other complaints

23. The applicants in the application no. 26657/16 raised further complaints under Article 3 of the Convention concerning the living conditions in the official refugee camps, provision of medical services and under Article 8 of the Convention concerning family reunification procedures. The applicants in the application no. 36423/16 raised further complaints under Article 3 of the Convention in conjunction with Article 13 about access to asylum procedures. The Court has examined the applications and the parties submissions and considers that, in the light of all the material in its possession and in so far as the matters complained of are within its competence, these complaints also do not meet the admissibility criteria set out in Articles 34 and 35 of the Convention. It follows that these parts of the applications must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Decides to join the applications;

Decides to strike out the applications in part;

Declares the remainder of the applications inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 5 March 2026.

Sophie Piquet María Elósegui
Acting Deputy Registrar President

Appendix

List of cases: