The case concerned several family members of Afghan nationality who applied for asylum in Germany on 23 June 2022. After a Dublin procedure which resulted in the establishment of Croatia’s responsibility under the Dublin III Regulation, the BAMF rejected the asylum application as inadmissible and ordered deportation to Croatia by decision of 15 July 2022. On 4 August 2022, the applicants appealed against this decision before the Regional Administrative Court of Hanover and applied for the suspensive effect of the action on the grounds that the asylum system in Croatia had systemic weaknesses because of the occurrence of violent pushpacks and illegal chain deportations. The Regional Administrative Court of Hanover ordered suspensive effect by decision of 7 September 2022 and overturned the BAMF decision by judgment of 9 January 2023. The BAMF lodged an onward appeal against this decision before the Higher Administrative Court of Lower Saxony, which was declared admissible by a decision of 22 February 2023.

The Higher Administrative Court of Lower Saxony referred to the decision of the Federal Administrative Court, BAMF v Applicant 2 (No 1 B 21/22, 07 March 2022) and CJEU, Bashar Ibrahim et.al. v Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Joined Cases C‑297/17, C‑318/17, C‑319/17 and C‑438/17, ECLI:EU:C:2019:219, 19 March 2019) and mentioned the principle of mutual trust in the CEAS, based on which particularly high requirements had to be applied to the question of whether sufficient protection exists in another Member State. Based on this, the Higher Administrative Court of Lower Saxony referred to the judgement of the Higher Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg, Applicants v Federal Office for Migration and Asylum (BAMF) (No A 4 S 2666/22, ECLI:DE:VGHBW:2023:0511.A4S2666.22.00, 11 May 2023), and held that even though country information on the situation in Croatia showed that there were repeated pushbacks from Croatia to Serbia or Bosnia-Herzegovina and illegal chain deportations occurred, there was no sufficient evidence that these violations occurred also in the case of Dublin returnees. The court found that the country information on the situation in Croatia only showed the situation of persons who had not yet applied for asylum. This could not be compared with the situation of Dublin returnees, who were already registered as asylum seekers and for whom Croatia had expressly agreed to conduct an asylum procedure.

Based on the above the Higher Administrative Court of Lower Saxony overturned the lower court decision and held that Germany was not responsible pursuant to Article 3(2) sentence 2 and 3 of the Dublin III Regulation because there was no sufficient evidence of systemic deficiencies in the asylum procedure and reception conditions for Dublin returnees in Croatia.