Court name: Fourth Chamber, Court of Justice of the European Union
State: France
Date of decision:

A stateless person of Palestinian origin, who lived in one of UNRWA’s areas of operations in Lebanon, made an asylum application in France claiming that it was impossible for UNRWA to provide him with sufficient access to medical care and appropriate living conditions required by his health condition. The Council of State (Conseil d’État) submitted a request for a preliminary ruling to the CJEU. The Court followed Advocate General Emilou’s opinion and found that UNRWA’s protection or assistance must be considered to have ceased when UNRWA is unable to ensure that the person ‘has access to the healthcare and medical treatment without which that person is exposed to a real risk of imminent death or to a real risk of suffering a serious, rapid and irreversible decline in his or her state of health or a significant reduction in life expectancy’. The existence of that risk is for the national court to assess. 

Court name: Court of Justice of the European Union
State: Hungary
Date of decision:

The case concerns the interpretation and scope of Article 12(1)(a) of the 2004 Qualification Directive (equivalent to Article 1D of the Refugee Convention). The CJEU held that persons who have registered with UNRWA or received UNRWA’s assistance will not be excluded from refugee status if that assistance has ceased for reasons beyond their control and independent of their volition. However, mere absence from UNRWA’s area of operation or a voluntary decision to leave it cannot be regarded as cessation of assistance. A person will be considered to have been forced to leave UNRWA’s area of operation where their personal safety was at serious risk and it was impossible for UNRWA to guarantee their living conditions. Where UNRWA’s assistance has ceased for reasons beyond the control of the applicant, and other exclusion clauses are not applicable, the applicant is automatically entitled to refugee status, but they are required to have made an application for refugee status.

Court name: Administrative Court of Luxembourg
State: Luxembourg
Date of decision:

The applicant appplicant was born in Russia and renounced his Russian nationality in 2000. He applied for a statelessness status in Luxembourg in 2008, but it was discovered that he had applied for asylum status in the Netherlands in 2006, which was rejected, so Luxembourg transferred the applicant to the Netherlands under the Dublin regulation. The applicant returned several times to Luxembourg and was sent back to the Netherlands. He made a repeated application for statelessness status in 2014, where the courts accepted his argument that statelessness status determination doesn't fall within the scope of the Dublin regulations, and the court also accepted that his voluntary renunciation of Russian nationality does not exclude him from protection under the 1954 Convention.