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On 28 July 2026, the District Court of the Hague delivered its judgments ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2026:21085 and ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2026:21092 following the CJEU’s preliminary rulings in Quotal and Ebilum, respectively, concerning the scope of judicial review in asylum appeals under article 46 (3) of  Directive 2013/32/EU. The CJEU had held that first-instance courts may carry out their own full and ex nunc assessment of the facts and law and, where they have all the necessary elements, determine whether the applicant meets the conditions for international protection.

Applying those rulings, in the judgment following Quotal, the District Court carried out its own assessment of the applicant’s asylum claim. The case concerned a Pakistani national who had previously suffered serious harm and claimed to face a risk of persecution linked to his attributed apostasy from Islam. The Court considered his asylum account credible in its entirety and found that the risk of serious harm on account of his attributed apostasy amounted to a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of religion. It therefore concluded that the applicant qualified for refugee status.

Likewise, in the judgment following the CJEU’s ruling in Ebilum, the District Court carried out its own assessment of the asylum claims of an Iraqi family and it recognised the credibility of the applicants’ daughters’ identification with the fundamental value of equality between women and men. It further clarified that a “reasonable degree of probability” of persecution requires the risk to go beyond a mere possibility, while not requiring certainty. In light of country information concerning gender-based and honour-related violence in Iraq, the Court concluded that the daughters had a well-founded fear of persecution and qualified for refugee status. Their parents and siblings were granted a derived right of residence under Article 23 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1347.

In both judgments, the District Court decided the cases itself and instructed the Minister to issue the corresponding residence documents.

On 24 September 2026, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in Case C‑511/25 (Prokoda) following a request for a preliminary ruling from the Czech Supreme Administrative Court (Nejvyšší správní soud). The case concerned the interpretation of Article 17(1) Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 (the ''Dublin III Regulation'') and whether a Member State may decide to examine an application for international protection where another Member State has been designated as responsible under the residual criterion of Article 3(2).

The Court noted that Article 17(1) refers to a derogation from Article 3(1), which could suggest that the discretionary clause applies only where responsibility is determined under the Chapter III criteria. However, the provision also refers more broadly to applications for which a Member State is not responsible under the criteria laid down in the Regulation. The Court therefore examined the context of the provision and found that Article 3(1) and (2) form part of the same system for determining the responsible Member State. While Article 3(1) refers to the Chapter III criteria, Article 3(2) provides a residual criterion where those criteria do not identify a responsible Member State. It would therefore be inconsistent to allow Member States to derogate from responsibility determined under Article 3(1), but not where responsibility is established under Article 3(2).

The Court further referred to its case law and reiterated that Article 17(1) grants Member States absolute discretion to examine an application for international protection for which they are not responsible under the Dublin III Regulation, on the basis of political, humanitarian or practical considerations.

It therefore concluded that this discretion may also be exercised where another Member State has been designated as responsible under the residual criterion in Article 3(2).

On 24 March 2026, the Federal Administrative Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht) delivered its decision in case BVerwG 1 C 6.25. The case concerned whether Germany was required to grant a residence permit to a person who had previously been recognised as a refugee by another EU Member State following a transfer of responsibility.

The applicant, an Ethiopian national recognised as a refugee in Italy, entered Germany in 2019 and applied for asylum. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees rejected the application as inadmissible and ordered her return to Italy. Since the applicant could not be returned to Italy, the domestic courts ordered the defendant State to issue a new refugee travel document and to grant her a residence permit.

The question before the Federal Administrative Court was whether Germany was also obliged to grant a residence permit under national law in light of the prior recognition of refugee status in Italy. The Court upheld the Government’s appeal against the decision of the Bavarian Administrative Court of Appeal ordering the authorities to grant a residence permit and considered that neither national law nor international and EU law imposes an obligation on Germany to grant a residence permit in such circumstances. It found that the conditions for issuing a residence permit under § 25(2) sentence 1 alternative 1 of the Residence Act were not met, as refugee status had been granted by Italy and not by German authorities.

It considered that the legal framework of the Geneva Refugee Convention and Directive 2011/95/EU does not require a Member State to grant a residence permit to a person recognised as a refugee by another Member State, as responsibility for residence rights remains with the recognising State.

Unofficial translation by the EWLU team