Case summaries

Courts must establish the current situation of the region from which the complainant originates and relate it to the individual situation of the complainant in the grounds of the decision.

In the case of an Afghan family, the lower instance court did not sufficiently consider the security situation in the complainants’ country of origin, in particular with regard to the situation for minors. Thereby the court violated the right to equal treatment among foreigners.

In the case of an Afghan Shia Hazara applicant, the Belgian Council for Alien Litigation considered that the request for international protection was based on several sources of fear, which must be analysed in combination with each other, forming a cluster of concordant evidence.

The Council granted the applicant refugee status. 

Given the emergency of the situation, family reunification could only be refused in circumstances where the relevant individual does not comply with principles of public order.

As a result, the Court concluded that there were serious doubts as to the legality of the decisions refusing family reunification.

The ECJ has to decide on the assessment of the existence of a serious individual threat by reason of mere presence in a certain area. It has to decide whether there is a minimal threshold of civilian fatalities that excludes such risk or if a holistic approach taking into account all circumstances special to the case has to be followed to assess the existence of such threat.

An authority examining an application for international protection by an individual already holding protection status in another Member Statemust check whether the protection of fundamental rights is systematically guaranteed by the country already providing international protection. This especially concerns applicants who are entirely dependent on public aid, and, in particular, on the public health system of the country providing them protection. 

The political, humanitarian and economic crisis in Venezuela can justify subsidiary protection status if the individual’s return to the country of origin, would cause serious harm, characterized by the level of seriousness required to be considered as inhuman and degrading treatment.

The Court of Appeal set aside the Upper Tribunal’s Country Guidance on internal relocation to Kabul, on the basis that it had made a factual error, wrongly stating that civilian causalities amounted to less than 0.001 per cent, rather than less than 0.1 per cent, of the population of Kabul. However, it did dismiss AS’s ground of appeal, which concerned whether internal relocation would be unreasonable.

Member States are required to revoke subsidiary protection on the basis of art. 19(1), if they find out that the conditions that led to the granting of status were never met, regardless of whether the incorrect assessment of facts leading to the status is imputable exclusively to the national authority itself

Persons entitled to refugee protection should be accorded the same treatment regarding assistance as provided to nationals of the Member State. Article 29 Directive 2011/95 and Article 23 Geneva Convention do not make this treatment dependant on the length of the applicant’s stay in the Member State. 

A refugee may rely on the incompatibility of legislation, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, with Article 29(1) of Directive 2011/95 before the national courts in order to remove the restriction on his rights provided for by that legislation.

The CJEU ruled on family reunification visas for the family of an individual with subsidiary protection status. It was found that an application for family reunification based on refugee status can be rejected if it was not made within three months of the sponsor receiving refugee status. However, there must be the possibility of lodging a fresh application under a different set of rules provided that national legislation:

–        lays down that such a ground of refusal cannot apply to situations in which particular circumstances render the late submission of the initial application objectively excusable;

–        lays down that the persons concerned are to be fully informed of the consequences of the decision rejecting their initial application and of the measures which they can take to assert their rights to family reunification effectively; and

–        ensures that sponsors recognised as refugees continue to benefit from the more favourable conditions for the exercise of the right to family reunification applicable to refugees, specified in Articles 10 and 11 or in Article 12(2) of the directive.