On December 30th, 2025 The Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania (LVAT) has issued a landmark ruling in which it found that State Border Guard Service (SBGS) officers acted unlawfully and violated the right of a Sri Lankan national to apply for international protection (asylum) in Lithuania when they pushed back a Sri Lankan national to Belarus in a forest.
This case is of precedential importance, as so far in Lithuanian case law only pushbacks at border checkpoints have been declared unlawful. This is the first time that an administrative court of the highest instance has explicitly ruled on pushbacks at the so-called “green border”, i.e. not through the official border crossings.
In 2023, the applicant applied to the Regional Administrative Court for compensation for non-pecuniary damage, claiming that the actions of the public officials had endangered his life, caused serious damage to his health (frostbite to his limbs) and unlawful deprivation of liberty. Upon his arrival in Lithuania, he was not given the opportunity to apply for asylum and was expelled from the territory of Lithuania knowing that Belarusian officials would not allow him to enter Belarus and would return him. The applicant was turned around many times between the Lithuanian and Belarusian territories in the presence of freezing temperatures, a situation which lasted about 10 days, and his freedom was effectively restricted without a court decision or administrative act. According to the applicant, such actions violated national and EU law norms governing access to asylum, return of aliens, the right to liberty and security and the principle of non-refoulement.
The Regional Administrative Court dismissed the applicant’s complaint as unfounded and the applicant appealed against this decision.
The right to asylum applies regardless of the way individual crosses the border
The Supreme Administrative Court found that the applicant was forcibly removed from the territory of the Republic of Lithuania on 23 October 2023 without having been given a real opportunity to submit an asylum application. The Court stressed that the right to apply for international protection also applies in cases where a person has crossed the state border illegally, including at the border or in its protection zone.
The ruling refers to the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which underlines that the practice of summary revocation, where a person is prevented from lodging an application for international protection, is contrary to EU law.
It should be noted that this ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court was adopted in the context of the development of EU law and, presumably, in light of the most recent judgment of the CJEU of 18 December 2025 in Hamoudi v Frontex (C-136/24 P) . In this case, the CJEU stressed that the EU institutions and Member States must guarantee the right to apply for international protection in practice and cannot deny it through factual practice. According to the CJEU, in such cases, applicants cannot be subject to a disproportionately high standard of proof – it is sufficient to present a body of initial, consistent evidence. The Court also stated that national and EU courts must actively exercise their powers to gather evidence.
The asylum seeker is the weaker party in the process
A crucial aspect of the ruling is the court’s interpretation of the rules of evidence. The Supreme Court made it clear that the asylum seeker is considered to be the weaker party to the dispute, and therefore, where there is no objective evidence that the person did not apply for asylum, any ambiguity must be interpreted in his/her favour.
This is particularly important in practice, as SBGS officials often claim that the foreigners did not apply for asylum, and the persons themselves often lose their phones or other means of capturing evidence during the reversal.
Illegal acts acknowledged, but compensation is symbolic
The Court found that the actions of the SBGS were unlawful and that the applicant suffered adverse consequences, including health problems (frostbite). However, the Supreme Administrative Court held that in this case the mere acknowledgement of the violation of the law constituted sufficient satisfaction, and therefore no non-material damages were awarded.
The case was initiated by the Human Rights Monitoring Institute together with the law firm ReLex, as one of the strategic cases aiming at the judicial assessment of the fundamental deficiencies in the application of the law in the Lithuanian migration and asylum system and the correction of the flawed practice of the institutions.
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