Asylum Act
(AsylA)

¹ In the case of per­sons who ap­ply for asylum at a Swiss air­port, the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity shall re­cord their per­son­al de­tails and take their fin­ger­prints and pho­to­graphs. It may re­cord ad­di­tion­al bio­met­ric data and sum­mar­ily ques­tion asylum seekers about their it­in­er­ary and the reas­ons for leav­ing their coun­try.⁵⁴

^1bis SEM shall veri­fy its com­pet­ence to carry out the asylum pro­ced­ure, tak­ing ac­count of the pro­vi­sions of the Dub­lin As­so­ci­ation Agree­ments.⁵⁵

^1ter It shall au­thor­ise entry if Switzer­land is com­pet­ent to carry out the asylum pro­ced­ure in ac­cord­ance with Reg­u­la­tion (EU) No 604/2013⁵⁶ and the asylum seeker:⁵⁷

a.

ap­pears to be at risk for any of the grounds stated in Art­icle 3 para­graph 1 or un­der threat of in­hu­mane treat­ment in the coun­try from which they have dir­ectly ar­rived; or

b.

es­tab­lishes that the coun­try from which they have dir­ectly ar­rived would force them, in vi­ol­a­tion of the ban on re­foule­ment, to re­turn to a coun­try in which they ap­pear to be at risk.⁵⁸

² If, on the basis of the meas­ures in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 and the veri­fic­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1^bis, it is not im­me­di­ately pos­sible to de­term­ine wheth­er the re­quire­ments for an entry per­mit in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 1^ter are ful­filled, entry shall be tem­por­ar­ily denied.⁵⁹

^2bis In or­der to avoid cases of hard­ship, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may spe­cify the ad­di­tion­al cases in which entry will be au­thor­ised.⁶⁰

³ If SEM denies entry to asylum seekers, it shall provide them with a place of stay and ap­pro­pri­ate ac­com­mod­a­tion. It bears the cost of the ac­com­mod­a­tion. Air­port op­er­at­ors are re­spons­ible for provid­ing reas­on­ably priced ac­com­mod­a­tion.⁶¹

^3bis The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall guar­an­tee free coun­selling and leg­al rep­res­ent­a­tion to per­sons who sub­mit a re­quest for asylum at a Swiss air­port, ana­log­ously to the pro­vi­sions of Art­icles 102f–102k.⁶²

⁴ The asylum seeker must be in­formed about the de­cision on deni­al of entry and on the al­loc­a­tion of a place of stay with­in two days of fil­ing the ap­plic­a­tion and be no­ti­fied of their rights of ap­peal. Pri­or to this, the asylum seeker shall be gran­ted a hear­ing in ac­cord­ance with the law.⁶³

⁵ Asylum seekers may be held at the air­port or ex­cep­tion­ally at an­oth­er loc­a­tion for a max­im­um of 60 days. On the is­sue of a leg­ally bind­ing re­mov­al or­der, asylum seekers may be trans­ferred to a pris­on spe­cific­ally for de­portees.

⁶ SEM may there­after al­loc­ate asylum seekers to a can­ton or a fed­er­al centre. In all oth­er cases, the fur­ther pro­ced­ure at the air­port is reg­u­lated by Art­icles 23, 29, 36 and 37.⁶⁴