The Migration Law Clinic will accept new cases in January 2022. The students will work on new cases from February 20212 until June 2022. 

If you have suggestions for cases or topics for the Migration Law Clinic, you can contact the Clinic coordinator (migrationlawclinic@vu.nl). See also under ‘For Clients’.

The Migration Law Clinic is currently working on the following two topics:

The right to shelter of parents with a Chavez-Vilchez right of residence

This project concerns the case of a Moroccan mother who has a right to reside in the Netherlands with her six-year-old Dutch child on the basis of Article 20 TfEU (the Chavez-Vilchez case law). The mother applied for emergency shelter to the municipality of Amsterdam. This application was refused, amongst others because the mother did not belong to the target group of emergency shelter, did not come to Netherlands well-prepared and could return to Morocco with the support of the municipality. The mother started two procedures against the refusal of  emergency shelter: an appeal against the decision of the municipality of Amsterdam to refuse shelter before the administrative court and a civil law procedure against the Dutch State about the alleged illegality of the refusal of shelter before the civil court. In the administrative procedure, the district court declared the appeal against the refusal well-founded. The State appealed this judgment before the Central Appeal Council (Centrale Raad van Beroep). In the civil procedure, both the district court and the appeal court ruled that the Dutch State did not act illegally by refusing the mother emergency shelter. The mother appealed these judgments before the Supreme Court (Hoge Raad). The procedures before the Central Appeal Council and the Supreme Court are still pending. The Clinic is writing an expert opinion for both procedures.

This project is supervised by Dion Kramer and Isabella Leroy

Suspensive effect of the higher appeal of the State in Dublin cases

On 1 September 2021 the Dutch Council of State referred preliminary questions to the Court of Justice in several Dublin Cases. The question is in essence: Does EU law allow a national higher appeal court to grant an interim measure to the determining authority, which suspends the six months time limit for transferring the applicant? In order to answer this question the Clinic will examine amongst others the text of the relevant provisions of the Dublin Regulation (Arts 27 and 29 Regulation 604/2013) and the system and purpose of the Dublin Regulation.

This project is supervised by Janna Wessels and Marcelle Reneman

This is an overview of the cases supported by the Migration Law Clinic in the period 2013-2021:

The Migration Law expert opinions can be found here.