The case was registered before the CJEU under C-294/22

The applicant, a Palestinian from Lebanon, suffering from a genetic disease affecting haemoglobin production and requiring regular blood transfusions, arrived in France in August 2019 where he applied for asylum as after the death of his father, he could no longer easily secure a source of blood transfusions and needed a certain medication which the UNRWA refused to supply due to the high costs. The French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) dismissed the application on 11 October 2019. On appeal, the CNDA granted refugee status, holding that the UNRWA was unable to provide the applicant with sufficient access to tertiary health care, which concerned the most serious illnesses, and to the medicines on which he was dependent for his survival. The OFPRA appealed before the Council of State.

The CNDA found that it was established that UNRWA was unable to provide the person concerned with sufficient access to health care, which concerned the most serious illnesses, and to the medicine on which he depended for his survival and, thus, to ensure him living conditions consistent with its assistance mission, to the point of placing him in a state of serious personal insecurity such as to force him to leave Lebanon.
 

The Council of State considered that the case raised serious difficulties in the interpretation of EU law and referred two preliminary questions to the CJEU:

1. Irrespective of the provisions of national law authorising, subject to certain conditions, a foreign national’s stay on account of his state of health and, where appropriate, protecting him from expulsion, are the provisions of Article 12(1)(a) of Directive 2011/95/EU to be interpreted as meaning that a sick Palestinian refugee who, after actually availing himself of UNRWA’s protection or assistance, leaves the State or territory situated in the area of operation of that agency in which he was habitually resident on the ground that there can be no sufficient access to the care and treatment required by his state of health and that that failure to take charge entails a real risk to his life or physical integrity, may be regarded as being in a personal state of serious insecurity and in a situation where UNRWA is unable to provide it with living conditions consistent with its mission?
2. If so, what criteria — relating, for example, to the seriousness of the illness or the nature of the care needed — make it possible to identify such a situation?