A Ukrainian national who was granted temporary protection in Belgium in March 2022 later travelled to Czechia to join her family due to her age and her health condition. She applied for a residence permit in Czechia on the basis of temporary protection, but the Ministry of the Interior rejected it as inadmissible without a substantive review, because she had already been granted temporary protection status and residence permit in another Member State. 

The applicant appealed before the Prague Municipal Court stating that she informed the Belgian authorities of her move to Czechia, that she requested the termination of her temporary protection status in Belgium and was awaiting confirmation. By decision of 13 August 2024, the Prague Municipal Court upheld the applicant's appeal. The court considered that preventing the submission of an application could amount to unlawful interference with the applicant's rights. It then noted that Sections 5(1)(d) and (2) of Act No. 65/2022 Coll, which allowed the Ministry of the Interior to reject as inadmissible the applicant's request without substantive review, conflicted with EU Law. It emphasised that Article 28 of the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) does not exclude a person from temporary protection on the sole ground that such protection has already been granted in another Member State. The Ministry of the Interior appealed the decision to the Supreme Administrative Court, arguing that Sections 5(1)(d) and (2) of Act No. 65/2022 Coll. were consistent with EU law, that Article 28 of the TPD was not applicable to the case, and that the handling of applications made by beneficiaries of temporary protection in another Member State was solely governed by national legislation.  

The Supreme Administrative Court first addressed the exclusion from judicial review against an inadmissible decision on temporary protection under Section 5(2) of Act No. 65/2022 Coll, citing the CJEU judgment A.N. v Ministerstvo vnitra (C-753/23, 27 February 2025). It concluded that exclusion from judicial review was incompatible with EU law, as it unlawfully denied the right to an effective remedy to persons benefiting from temporary protection.  

The court then considered whether the inadmissibility of an application for temporary protection, due to it being submitted by an individual who was granted such protection in another EU Member State, as provided under Section 5(1)(d) of Act No. 65/2022 Coll., was compatible with EU law. While examining the TPD, the court found that Member States are obliged to take all the necessary measures to ensure the issuance of residence permits for persons enjoying temporary protection for the entire duration of that protection. The court emphasised that national authorities must assess whether the applicant is already exercising the rights conferred by the TPD in another Member State; if so, this may justify not granting the same rights again.  

The court then examined whether EU law grants beneficiaries of temporary protection the right to choose the Member State in which they will exercise the rights conferred by the TPD, and whether this includes a right to secondary relocation to another Member State. The court agreed with the Ministry of the Interior that the TPD does not, in itself, grant beneficiaries of temporary protection the right to choose their host Member State. Instead, Article 25 of the TPD grants Member States the discretion to reach mutual agreements on which of them will receive beneficiaries of temporary protection, and relocation is permitted under Article 26 and is carried out at the request of the Member States. The court then underlined that the impossibility of changing the host Member State based on the will of the beneficiary of the TPD was further underlined by Article 11, which states that a Member State should take back a beneficiary of temporary protection if that person stays on or attempts to enter the territory of another Member State without authorisation. However, with respect to temporary protection granted to Ukrainian nationals, the court highlighted that, in the Council Implementing Decision No. 2022/382, Member States explicitly declared their intention not to apply Article 11. The court noted that Member States considered that Ukrainian nationals have the right to move freely within the EU under the 90-day visa-free travel period, and within this timeframe, they may freely choose the Member State in which they wish to enjoy the rights associated with temporary protection. The court found that such agreement between Member States to exclude Article 11 provided the right to beneficiaries of temporary protection to move to another Member State and be issued a residence permit. It also underlined that the European Commission, in its document with answers to frequently asked questions on the TPD, stated that when a person relocates to another Member State, the second Member State must grant the applicant all rights deriving from temporary protection. Moreover, in its Operational guidelines for the implementation of Council Implementing Decision 2022/382, the European Commission affirmed that if a person enjoying temporary protection “moves to another Member State where they receive another residence permit under temporary protection, the first issued residence permit and the rights arising from it must be terminated”. 

The Supreme Administrative Court acknowledged that rights derived from temporary protection cannot be enjoyed in more than one Member State simultaneously, and therefore, it is the applicant who must take steps to terminate their residence permit in another Member State, and only if they fail to provide proof of this, then national authorities can reject the application. The court emphasised that, if the residence permit is not revoked due to inaction of the authorities of the first state, such inaction cannot be held against the beneficiary of temporary protection.  

Considering the above, the Supreme Administrative Court found the Ministry of the Interior's appeal unfounded. It concluded that the Czech legal provision on the inadmissibility of applications for temporary protection under Section 5(1)(d) of Act No. 65/2022 Coll. was incompatible with the EU law. It then stressed that the Ministry of the Interior cannot reject as inadmissible a request for temporary protection made by solely on the ground that they were previously granted such protection in another Member State.