In conclusions published on Thursday 26 October in Case C-550/16, European Court of Justice (CJEU) Advocate General Yves Bot said that a minor from outside the EU who, after being granted asylum in an EU member state, wishes to gather his family around him as a minor must not be refused the grounds that he has become an adult in the meantime.
A non-EU national arrived in the Netherlands as an unaccompanied child refugee and lodged an asylum request on 26 February 2014. She reached the age of adulthood on 2 June 2014 and the Dutch authorities granted her asylum and a five-year residence permit on 21 October 2014 with retroactive effect from the date of the lodging of the request.
A Dutch association then lodged on behalf of this individual a request for temporary right of residence for her parents and brothers (minors) for family regrouping on 23 December 2014. The request was rejected by the Netherlands on 27 May 2015 on the grounds that the requester was no longer a child when the request for family regrouping was lodged and therefore could not request family regrouping on the grounds that he was a child.
A Dutch court to which the case was sent decided to send it for a preliminary ruling to the CJEU to find out whether the request for family regrouping could indeed be rejected.
Advocate General Yves Bot pointed out in his conclusions that in order to lodge a request for family regrouping, the requester first needed the right of asylum, which explained the late request. Next, Bot said that the key date for deciding on whether the person was an unaccompanied minor was the date on which family regrouping became possible, in other words the date on which asylum and the residence permit were issued, 21 October 2014. Since the fact of being a refugee here was retroactive, the advocate general says that the date on which family regrouping became possible was the date of the request for asylum, 26 February 2014, while the requester was still a child. Bot therefore concluded that it was possible for this individual to benefit from the right of family regrouping as an unaccompanied minor despite the fact that she had become an adult in the meantime. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)