The applicant, Syrian national, has submitted an asylum application on 3 April 2021 claiming that he would be subject to honour killing by his girlfriend family if removed to Germany and that German authorities could not protect him. The BAMF rejected the application as inadmissible because he was granted international protection in Germany since 16 January 2017. A removal order was issued and an appeal was dismissed as unfounded.

On 23 December 2021, a subsequent application was lodged and the applicant adduced as new evidence whatsupp messages, photos and a letter from German police. The BAMF rejected again the application as inadmissible considering that no new elements or findings were provided. The applicant contested the decision. The Court of the Hague referred to the CJEU judgement LH v Staatssecretaris van Justitie en Veiligheid, 10 June 2021 for the assessment of subsequent applications and noted that although the determining authority is not obliged to conduct a hearing when assessing the admissibility, however based on Article 14 par. 1 of the recast APD,  the authority must always hear the third country national when an assessment on merits is conducted.  

It further referred to the CJEU judgment in X.Y. v. Austria of 9 September 2021, C-18/20 and held that subsequent application for asylum may be based on elements or findings that are new because they occurred after the adoption of a decision on the previous application and elements or findings that are new because they were first submitted by the applicant.

The Court allowed the appeal and annulled the decision based on the fact that the State Secretary did not distinguish between the two stages of that examination in the context of step 1, the assessment of the admissibility of the application. The State Secretary did not consider, first, whether any new elements or findings had been submitted by the applicant and, secondly, whether those new elements or findings significantly increased the likelihood of international protection. The State Secretary conducted these two stages together, a clear distinction between the different stages, as follows from L.H. should have been made.

Despite the fact that the decision was annulled, the Court of the Hague considered that its legal consequences remain valid.