The case concerned the reopening at national level  of the case which triggered the submission of questions before the CJEU by the Council of State in a judgment of 22 March 2022,  Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) v AB. The CJEU answered the question in the ruling of 5 October 2023, French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons v SW.

The Council of State noted that the OFPRA in its appeal before the Council of State invoked that the applicant could be recognised as refugee only if UNRWA would fail to provide sufficient access to tertiary treatment and necessary medicaments for her survival, forcing the applicant to leave Lebanon due to a personal state of serious insecurity.  The OFPRA considered that the CNDA committed various errors in its assessment that the applicant must be granted refugee status because it did not investigate into the reasons for the applicant to leave UNRWA areas of operation and whether she left due to threats on her security. The OFPRA alleged that the CNDA wrongly assessed that the fact that UNRWA was in an impossibility of financing the tertiary medical care adapted to the state of health of a Palestinian refugee it constituted a reasons of end of effective protection of this organism and that the applicant could invoke the benefit of the Geneva Convention and to assume that UNRWA was to be regarded as no longer able to provide assistance although the provision of tertiary medical care was not in its mandate.

The Council of State reiterated the findings and conclusion of the CJEU in the ruling of 5 October 2023 where the later stated that Article 12 (1)(a) second sentence of the Qualification Directive must be interpreted as meaning that the UNRWA protection or assistance must be assumed as having ceased when this body is no longer able to ensure that a stateless Palestinian relevant of its protection or assistance has access to care and medical treatment in the absence of which the person would be at serious and real risk of imminent death or a real risk of being exposed to a serious decline, rapid and irreversible of his/her state of health of a significant reduction of his/her life expectancy, the verification of such circumstances being the attribute of the national judge.

In light of the abovementioned, the Council of State assessed that the CNDA made an autonomous assessment and found that UNRWA was in a situation of incapacity to offer M.B, the applicant, sufficient access to the medical treatment and the medicaments on which her life was dependent of, that this body could not ensure the applicant the living conditions in line with its mandate of assistance, to such a degree as to place the applicant in a personal state of serious insecurity capable of forcing er to leave Lebanon. The CNDA correctly assessed that the protection or assistance of UNRWA in the sense of Article 12 (1)(a) second sentence of the Qualification Directive must be regarded as having ceased, because it has sufficiently reasoned its decision and did not commit any legal error. The circumstance that the departure of the applicant from the UNRWA area of operation was not motivated by threats on her security and that the required medical treatment exceed the simple general treatment have no impact in the overall assessment of the case.