EU's top court rules foreigners can't be jailed for illegal entry

EU's top court rules foreigners can't be jailed for illegal entry

The EU's top court has ruled foreigners cannot be jailed simply for crossing into a country illegally. The ruling comes amid heated disputes within the EU over the mass influx of asylum seekers, dw.com reports

The European Court of Justice's (ECJ) ruling on Tuesday refers to a case which predates the refugee debate dominating politics across the 28-nation bloc.

In 2013, before the current influx of migrants, a Ghanaian woman, Selina Affum, was apprehended in France as she was about to enter the Channel Tunnel while taking a bus from Belgium to the United Kingdom, which is not a member of the passport-free Schengen zone.

She presented only a Belgian passport with another name and photograph, upon which French authorities took her into custody for illegally entering the country.

"The Return Directive prevents a national of a non-EU country who has not yet been subject to the return procedure being imprisoned solely because he or she has entered the territory of a Member State illegally across an internal border of the Schengen area," the court said in a statement.

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