The case concerns the interpretation of Article 12(1)(a) of the Qualification Directive.

The applicant, XT, is a stateless person of Palestinian origin, who was born in Damascus (Syria) and who holds a registration card as a Palestinian refugee in the UNRWA refugee camp of Yarmouk. From 2013 to 2015 he worked in Lebanon and then returned to Syria but left a few days later due to the war. He arrived in Germany where he was granted subsidiary protection on 29 August 2016. He challenged the decision and on appeal the Administrative Court ordered the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) to grant him refugee status. On 18 December 2017, the Higher Administrative Court dismissed the appeal brought by BAMF, holding that XT, a stateless person of Palestinian origin, had to be regarded as a refugee within the meaning of Article 12(1)(a) of the Qualification Directive, as the protection received from UNRWA had ceased for reasons independent of the applicant. That court also noted that XT had no access to protection from UNRWA before leaving Syria and that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Lebanon had closed their borders to Palestinian refugees in Syria.

On revision, the Federal Administrative Court decided to stay the proceedings and refer several questions to the CJEU, among them, concerning the UNRWA area of operations that should be taken into consideration when determining whether the UNRWA’s protection of a stateless person of Palestinian origin has ceased and specifically whether “account should be taken only of the field of the UNRWA area of operations in which a stateless person of Palestinian origin had his or her actual residence at the time of his or her departure from the said area of operations, or also of other fields falling within that area of operations and, in that case, which of those fields” (par. 44).

The CJEU held that “the second sentence of Article 12(1)(a) of Directive 2011/95 must be interpreted as meaning that, in order to determine whether the protection or assistance from UNRWA has ceased, it is necessary to take into account, as part of an individual assessment of all the relevant factors of the situation in question, all the fields of UNRWA’s area of operations which a stateless person of Palestinian origin who has left that area has a concrete possibility of accessing and safely remaining therein.” In addition, “the second sentence of Article 12(1)(a) of Directive 2011/95 must be interpreted as meaning that UNRWA’s protection or assistance cannot be regarded as having ceased where a stateless person of Palestinian origin left the UNRWA area of operations from a field in that area in which his or her personal safety was at serious risk and in which UNRWA was not in a position to provide that individual with protection or assistance, first, if that individual voluntarily travelled to that field from another field in that area in which his or her personal safety was not at serious risk and in which that person could receive protection or assistance from UNRWA and, secondly, if he or she could not reasonably expect, on the basis of the specific information available to him or her, to receive protection or assistance from UNRWA in the field to which he or she travelled or to be able to return at short notice to the field from which he or she came, which is for the national court to verify.”

Note that information can be found on this case in the EUAA Case Law Database as it was presented before the Federal Administrative Court [Bundesverwaltungsgericht]: Applicant (Palestine) vs Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), BVerwG 1 C 5.18, ECLI:DE:BVerwG:2019:140519B1C5.18.0, 14 May 2019.