The case concerned the continuous detention of the applicant between 2 and 17 May 2024 on the basis of two consecutively imposed detention measures. The Court of the Hague seated in Roermond found that the first measure, which was imposed to ensure the implementation of the Dublin transfer decision of the applicant to Spain, was unlawful before this measure was lifted. However, the State Secretary kept the applicant in custody - in the situation in which his liberty was unlawfully deprived - and imposed a new detention measure on him, with the aim to ensure the removal of the applicant to his country of origin.

The legal question at stake was whether the fact that the first measure was unlawful, but the applicant was held in continuous detention already means that the judicial authority must order immediate release or whether the judicial authority is only authorised and obliged to do so if the second measure is also unlawful.

The CJEU ruled that Article 15(2) and (4) of the Return Directive, Article 9(3) of the Reception Conditions Directive, and Article 28(4) of the Dublin III Regulation, read in the light of Articles 6 and 47 of the EU Charter must be interpreted as not precluding national legislation which does not require the competent judicial authority to order the release of a third-country national, who is in detention pursuant to a measure adopted on the basis of the Return Directive, on the ground that that person, whose detention had initially been ordered pursuant to a measure adopted on the basis of the Dublin III Regulation, had not been released immediately after a finding that that latter measure had become unlawful.