The applicant submitted an application for international protection for her and her two minor children on 31 March 2022 and was informed by letter of 3 October 2022 notified the State Secretary for failure to timely decide on the asylum application and has further submitted an appeal on the same grounds.

The court of the Hague noted that the State Secretary adopted a decision on 21 September 2022 no. WBV 2022/22 and amended the Aliens Act Implementation Guidelines (WBV 2022/22) in order to extend the period for deciding on asylum applications by nine months. This extension included also the applicant’s case and she claimed that the State Secretary has wrongly extended the time to decide on asylum applications based on a high influx of migrants.

The court noted that the State Secretary can extend the decision period to 9 months in case of large number of third country nationals or stateless persons applying for international protection at the same time. Also, the court noted that in view of the extension, the notification submitted by the applicant on 3 October 2022 was too early since the decision deadline did not expiry, and thus the appeal is inadmissible.