X and Y, two spouses of Lybian nationality lodged, also on behalf of their six minor children, application for international protection with the State Secretary claiming that, if returned to Libya, they would face a real risk of ‘serious harm' within the meaning of Article 15 (b) of the recast Qualification Directive 2011/95/UE. They relied on facts relating to their personal circumstances and to the general circumstances of their country of origin, in particular the general level of violence in Libya and the resulting humanitarian situation. The State Secretary rejected the applications for international protection as unfounded. X and Y appealed the decisions to the District Court of The Hague sitting in ‘s Hertogenbosch. The court decided to stay the proceedings and submit four questions for preliminary ruling to the CJEU. 

The first question concerned whether Article 15 of the recast QD must be interpreted as meaning that, to determine whether an applicant for international protection is eligible for subsidiary protection, the competent national authority must examine all the relevant factors, relating both to the individual position and personal circumstances of the applicant and to the general situation in the country of origin, before identifying the type of serious harm that those factors may potentially substantiate. 

The CJEU ruled that Article 15 of the recast QD should be interpreted as meaning that, to determine whether an applicant is eligible for protection, the national authority must examine all the relevant factors, relating both to the individual position and personal circumstances of the applicant and to the general situation in the country of origin, before identifying the type of serious harm that those factors may potentially substantiate. 

The second question concerned whether Article 15(c) of the recast QD must be interpreted to mean that to assess whether there is a real risk of suffering a type of serious harm as defined in that provision, the competent national authority must be able to take account of factors relating to the individual position and personal circumstances of the applicant other than the mere fact of coming from an area of a given country where ‘the most extreme cases of general violence', within the meaning of the judgment of the ECtHR of 17 July 2008, NA. v. the United Kingdom (CE:ECHR:2008:0717JUD002590407, § 115), occur. 

The court ruled that the factors relating to the individual position and personal circumstances of the applicant which the competent national authority must take into account necessarily go beyond the fact of coming from an area of a given country where ‘the most extreme cases of general violence', within the meaning of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. In this respect, the court clarified that the list of relevant factors relating to the individual position and personal circumstances of the applicant contained in Article 4(3)(c) of that directive is not exhaustive, with the result that the national authority must carry out an assessment on a case-by-case basis, taking into account, as the case may be, any other factors relating to the individual position and personal circumstances of the applicant liable to contribute to the materialisation of the real risk of suffering a type of serious harm as defined in Article 15(c) of the said directive. In that context, factors specific to the applicant's private, family or professional life which may reasonably be presumed to increase the risk of serious harm to that applicant, if returned to his or her country of origin or to his or her country of former habitual residence, could inter alia be regarded as relevant in that context. 

The third question concerned in essence, whether Article 15(b) of the recast QD must be interpreted as meaning that the intensity of the indiscriminate violence occurring in the applicant's country of origin is capable of weakening the requirement of individualisation of the serious harm defined in that provision. The CJEU noted that the serious harm defined in Article 15 (b) requires a clear degree of individualisation thus the intensity of the indiscriminate violence occurring in the applicant's country of origin is not capable of weakening the requirement of individualisation of the serious harm defined in Article 15 (b). 

The fourth question was declared inadmissible.