Case registered before the CJEU under C-198/25 [Quetta] 

S., a Pakistani national applied for international protection in the Netherlands, and claimed to be at risk of persecution upon return to Pakistan because: i) his lost identity card was used in crimes which caused him major issues with victims’ relatives and the police, resulting in him having been detained and tortured for almost two weeks and ii) being allegedly considered an apostate by local residents, and having been severely abused by students of a cleric because of alcohol consumption. The applicant also claimed that that cleric had threatened him until his departure and physically abused him a year before his departure. The Minister of Asylum and Migration initially rejected his application on 20 December 2023 as it found the statements partly not credible and partly insufficiently serious. By interim ruling of 13 August 2024, the District Court of the Hague seated in Zwolle referred the case back for re-assessment requesting that the reasoning of the decision be improved. The Minister adopted a supplementary decision on 8 October 2024 and the applicant provided his response in a letter of 1 November 2024.

Upon appeal, the District Court of the Hague, seated in Zwolle, noted that the applicant contested the findings of the Minister, arguing that the latter misinterpreted or drawn wrong conclusions from the applicant’s statements. The Minister found the applicant’s apostasy not credible because the statements were deemed as varying and with strange explanations. The Minister considered the fact of living in the neighborhood for years despite problems with local residents as indication that S did not belong to a risk group. It also found that S mentioned only at a late stage of the proceedings his alleged problems with the cleric and considered that a serious harm was not likely to reoccur.

The court found that the applicant was exposed to serious harm because of the abuse and torture that he suffered but noted that the Minister, in asserting that there are no grounds for believing that serious harm may reocur, referred only to the periods during which S could have resided in Pakistan without difficulty. The court however found that the applicant's reasons for fearing serious harm upon return exist and that the Minister misrepresented or drew the wrong conclusions from the applicant’s statements, while it failed sufficiently reason the contested decision.

The court stayed the proceedings and referred several questions before the CJEU for interpretation of Article 46 (3) of the recast Asylum Procedure Directive (APD) and Article 47 of the EU Charter with regard to whether the court may itself rule on the substance of the asylum application. The referring court mentioned that in view of settled case law of the Council of State, the court may only annul a decision and refer the case back for re-assessment when it finds that the Minister did not sufficiently reason a negative decision, thus the court is not allowed to rule itself on the credibility of the asylum claim, in view of the available country of origin information (COI) and the administrative file.

The referring court questioned whether such practice is compliant with the recast Qualification Directive (QD) and the recast APD, also in view of the entry into application, as of 12 June 2026, of the EU Regulations 2024/1347 and 2024/1348. The referring court considered that the CJEU case law suggests that a court has the power to adopt a ruling following a full and ex nunc examination as to whether the asylum seeker meets the requirements to be granted international protection, when the court considers that it has all available elements concerning the facts and applicable law. The referring court considered that the answers to its questions will be decisive for the case and if the first two questions are answered in the affirmative, the third question in the negative, and if the information which became known during the course of the appeal can be taken into consideration, the court will give a substantive ruling and grant S international protection, in view of the fact that the Minister did not provide substantive reasons on why it found that serious harm will not recur if the applicant returns to Pakistan.

The following questions were submitted before the CJEU for a preliminary ruling:

1. Can a court derive from Article 46(3) of Directive 2013/32/EU, whether or not read in conjunction with Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, or from any other provision or principle of EU law, the power to make its own ruling on the credibility of an asylum account, superseding the ruling made by the minister?

2. Can the court derive from any of the abovementioned provisions the power to make a substantive and final ruling on the application for international protection on the basis of those parts of the asylum account which the minister deems credible and, if the answer to question 1 is in the affirmative, those parts of the asylum account which the court also deems credible? In that regard, may the court substitute its own ruling on the plausibility of the fear of persecution or the real risk of serious harm for that of the minister, especially if, against the background of publicly accessible country information, the court considers itself sufficiently informed to make such a ruling?

3. Can national case-law constrain the powers referred to in questions 1 and 2, for example on the ground of procedural autonomy, to the effect that those powers are still vested exclusively in the minister?

4. May the court take into account information, which was put forward on appeal, but which was not yet available at the administrative stage, in the ruling on the question whether it has enough information to make a substantive ruling? Is it relevant in that regard whether the parties have been able to express their views fully on the facts in writing or at the hearing?