CCPR/C/127/D/2956/2017 reception conditions, it continued to raise concerns with respect to reception conditions and the identification of vulnerable asylum seekers, among other things. 10 The authors refer to reports confirming poor reception conditions in Bulgaria, including in terms of poor hygiene, abuse, overcrowding, malnutrition and a lack of education, medical care and information on asylum procedures. 11 3.2 As for the mother’s need for medical support, the authors refer to reports stating that health care for asylum seekers is insufficient in Bulgaria. Health insurance often only exists on paper and there is no treatment for asylum seekers in need of psychosocial support. The authors claim that, because the Bulgarian police has already mistreated them and the mother and children did not receive medical treatment, there is a substantial reason to believe that, should they be returned to Bulgaria, they would be detained and would not receive adequate medical treatment. 3.3 At the time of the submission of their complaint to the Committee, the authors’ appeal against the decision of 13 January 2017 lodged before the Austrian Federal Administrative Court was still pending. 12 The Court had not granted suspensive effect to the proceedings before it. The authors therefore submitted that they were at risk of being removed to Bulgaria and lacked an effective remedy against the removal decision in the sense of article 2 (3) (a) of the Covenant. 13 State party’s observations on admissibility 4.1 On 14 April 2017, the State party submitted its observations on admissibility. The State party notes that the Dublin Regulation sets out which State member of the European Union is responsible for examining the merits of an asylum application, adding that normally that State is the one whose territory the asylum seeker has first entered from a third country. However, a member State may decide to examine an asylum application even if not required to do so under the Dublin Regulation, including when transferring the applicant would violate the non-refoulement principle. In the event of an outcome positive to the authors following their removal under the Dublin Regulation, the same Regulation obliges the sending member State to take back the authors. 10 11 12 13 4 UNHCR, “Bulgaria as a country of asylum: UNHCR observations on the current situation of asylum in Bulgaria”, April 2014. Available from www.refworld.org/docid/534cd85b4.html. European Council on Refugees and Exiles, “Dublin: Bulgaria”, Asylum Information Database (available from http://asylumineurope.org/reports/country/bulgaria/asylumprocedure/procedures/dublin); European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, “Report to the Bulgarian Government on the visit to Bulgaria carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment from 18 to 29 October 2010”; report by Nils Muižnieks, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, following his visit to Bulgaria from 9 to 11 February 2015; ProAsyl, “Humiliated, ill-treated and without protection: refugees and asylum seekers in Bulgaria” (2015); Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, Human Rights in Bulgaria in 2015: Annual Report of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (April 2016); European Council on Refugees and Exiles, “Country report Bulgaria”, Asylum Information Database (available from www.asylumineurope.org/reports/country/bulgaria); Amnesty International, “Report 2015/16: Bulgaria”, 24 February 2016 (available from www.refworld.org/docid/56d05b6ee.html); and Human Rights Watch, “Bulgaria: pushbacks, abuse at borders”, 20 January 2016 (available from www.hrw.org/news/2016/01/20/bulgaria-pushbacks-abuse-borders). The initial submission includes no information on the reasons for the appeal or the grounds invoked in it. In its submissions on admissibility of 14 April 2014, the State party does summarily provide such information. In addition to circumstances invoked in the initial communication before the Committee, the authors “would have been pushed around by police officers as a result of which one of the children had a broken leg. One child probably suffered from cancer.” No further information was provided by the State party or the authors on those two points. The State party’s submissions of 14 February 2014 only state that, according to the letter of the head physician of the Department for Child and Youth Health at Innsbruck University Hospital, the thalassaemia of one of the children was “not a disease but (merely) a thalassaemia minor with a Mentzer index of <13, so that there was no need for a further examination and a blood sample”. The authors also refer to M.S.S v. Belgium and Greece, in which, in their contention, the European Court of Human Rights found that inappropriate reception conditions and serious shortcomings in asylum procedures can amount to inhuman and degrading treatment.