Interpreting for the European Asylum Support Office (EASO)

As a member of the interpreting team I undertook to provide interpreting services from English to Greek and vice versa as part of workshops which involved hands-on examination of special actual or fictitious cases. For the purposes of the workshops, participants were divided into small groups of 10-15 people and an interpreter was assigned to each team, along with an expert from EASO as team instructor. Through cooperation and interactive communication, the purpose of the workshops was to analyse specific problems and to find ways to approach complex asylum-related issues. Consecutive interpreting was considered the most appropriate approach for this specific method of work.

The workshops focused on 3 specific topics:

Recognition of foreigners or stateless persons as beneficiaries of international protection

• Criteria for granting refugee status under the Geneva Convention
• What events constitute acts of persecution
• Directive 2011/95/EU on standards for the qualification of third-country nationals or stateless persons as beneficiaries of international protection
• Conditions for granting international and subsidiary protection
• Examination of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights
• Examination of the case law of the Greek courts

Preliminary questions for the Court of Justice of the European Union

• What role do preliminary questions play and how do they work?
• In what cases should they be used?
• How should they be formulated and submitted?

Evaluation of the reliability of evidence

• How to ascertain the reliability of evidence submitted by the applicant
• Procedure for examining an application
• Conditions and method for holding a personal interview
• Which questions are permissible and which are not to ascertain the applicant’s actual personal situation
• To what extent is the applicant required to adequately substantiate his/her application given that the collection of evidence is difficult when he/she is being persecuted?
• What role can information on countries of origin play?
• From which bodies and by what means can the court obtain access to information about the countries of origin?