The Presumption of Safety Tested: The Use of Country of Origin Information in the National Designation of Safe Countries of Origin

The article examines the process of evidentiary assessment of Country of Origin Information (COI) by policy-makers. It particularly focuses on the evidentiary assessment of COI by the UK and the Netherlands in their decisions to designate Albania and Kosovo as Safe Countries of Origin (SCO). The article assesses the COI standards laid down in the European Asylum Support Office’s (EASO) Country of Origin Information Report Methodology, and whether, and how, these standards are applied by the UK and the Netherlands. The analysis shows that the UK and the Netherlands have in practice not given proper meaning to the standards in the EASO methodology. As a result, the Dutch and UK SCO policies on Albania and Kosovo lack a common and systematic approach to COI. The policies fail to show how information was assessed and why substantial weight was attached to information in the determination that there is in general no persecution in Albania and Kosovo. The analysis of the Dutch and UK SCO policies leads to the important conclusion that there is much room for the improvement of evidentiary assessment of COI at the level of the decision-maker and policy-maker, especially, with regard to the transparent presentation of the evidentiary assessment. The European Union should consider the adoption of the COI quality standards in binding EU legislation that would provide the proper basis for a common and systematic approach to COI that can truly improve convergence in asylum decision-making.