The Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union, Nicholas Emiliou, has clarified the conditions for obtaining refugee status for two stateless persons of Palestinian origin who are applying, for the second time in Bulgaria, for refugee status in the European Union, in his Opinion delivered on Thursday 11 January (case C-563/22).
The two Palestinians refer to the lex specialis set out in Directive 2011/95/EU on the conditions for obtaining international protection. Under a provision (Article 12) of this Directive, stateless persons of Palestinian origin benefiting from the protection of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) are excluded from international protection status. However, this exclusion no longer applies if the protection or assistance “ceases”.
According to Mr Emiliou, this case raises a sensitive issue in light of events in the Gaza Strip since Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, even though the application for protection dates back to 2022. To put it plainly: can UNRWA protection or assistance be considered to have “ceased”, given the general living conditions prevailing in this area since the Israeli offensive in Gaza, without the need for the persons concerned to demonstrate that they are specifically targeted or affected by these conditions? - he asks.
According to the Advocate General, the fact that certain elements relied on by stateless persons have already been analysed during proceedings relating to a previous application for protection does not exempt a Member State from examining them again when verifying whether UNRWA protection or assistance has “ceased”.
Above all, in the Advocate General’s view, it cannot be ruled out that the UNRWA area of operation, or part of it, is suffering from systemic deficiencies of such gravity that there is a substantial risk that any person in it would be in a situation of extreme material poverty which would not enable them to meet their most basic needs (food, clothing, shelter), would harm their physical or mental health or would place them in a state of degradation incompatible with human dignity and, therefore, incompatible with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
In such a situation, to establish that UNRWA protection or assistance has “ceased”, he adds that it is not necessary for the person concerned to demonstrate that the general living conditions prevailing in the area are undignified for them on an individual basis.
However, the Advocate General points out that the right to refugee status is not unconditional, even in such a situation. The person concerned must apply for international protection. In addition, an individual assessment is still required to check that no other exclusions under EU law apply.
Read the Opinion of the Advocate General of the Court of Justice: https://aeur.eu/f/aco (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)