According to the CJEU Press release:

"A Syrian national who obtained refugee status in Greece subsequently applied for international protection in Germany. A German court held that, because of the living conditions of refugees in Greece, she faced a serious risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment, with the result that she could not return to Greece. The competent German authority rejected her application for refugee status but granted her subsidiary protection. She then brought an action against the refusal to grant refugee status before the German courts. The German Federal Administrative Court asks the Court of Justice whether, in such a situation, a competent authority is required to grant the applicant refugee status solely on the ground that her or she has already been granted refugee status by the other Member State or whether it may carry out a new, independent examination of the substance of that application. In its judgment, the Court finds that, at EU law currently stands, Member States are not required to recognise automatically decisions granting refugee status adopted by another Member State. However, Member States are free to do so. Germany did not exercise that option. In those circumstances, where the competent authority cannot reject as inadmissible an application for international protection of an applicant to whom another Member State has already granted such protection, on account of a serious risk to that applicant of being subjected, in that other Member State, to inhuman or degrading treatment, it must carry out a new, individual, full and up-to-date examination of the qualification for refugee status. In the context of that examination, that authority must nevertheless take full account of the decision of that other Member State to grant international protection to that applicant and of the elements on which that decision is based. To that end, it must, as soon as possible, initiate an exchange of information with the authority that adopted that decision. If the applicant qualifies as a refugee, the authority must grant him or her refugee status, and it does not have any discretion."