320 decisions on asylum overturned by courts in 2018

The administrative courts overturned a total of 330 negative asylum decisions taken by the Finnish Immigration Services (Migri) last year, reported National broadcaster Yle quoting Migri sources.

Although the Migri appointed hundreds of new staff in the wake of huge influx of refugees in 2015-2016, the authority claimed that the higher number of asylum applications led the huge mistakes in making decision in 2018.

The administrative courts reviewed 6800 asylum decisions in 2018 and overturned 330 negative decisions.

The higher number of wrong decisions took the error rate of Migri´s decision to 4.9 percent, which was just 0.2 percent in 2015, said the Yle report.

The Migri´s error reached to almost maximum level as the Interior Ministry set the upper limit of the error at 5 percent.

The courts ruled that Migri did not adequately assessed the applicants’ necessity for asylum or it had interpreted the law wrongly.

”The year 2016 was definitely one when mistakes happened,” Migri's asylum unit director, Esko Repo, told Yle.

Ilkka Pere, a former administrative court judge recently expressed his concern to a Finnish language tabloid Iltalehti that Migri´s way of granting refugee status to applicants not fulfilling the criteria for international protection.