A Guinean national requested international protection in Belgium on 25 November 2024. That same day, the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS) expressed doubts regarding his minority and requested a medical test, which concluded that the applicant was an adult. Moreover, a search in the Eurodac database showed that the applicant's fingerprints were taken on 21 August 2024 in Spain. Consequently, after submitting a take back request to the Spanish authorities, which Spain accepted, the CGRS issued a decision refusing residence on 7 April 2025.

On 14 April 2025, the applicant appealed before the Council for Alien Law Litigation (CALL), requesting the suspension of the transfer decision in the extreme urgency procedure. He argued that the transfer was invalid because the administrative decision declaring him an adult violated numerous national and international legal provisions, creating a cascading effect which affected the entire procedure. In support of his claim, he referred to F.B. v. Belgium, in which the ECtHR had found that bone tests in Belgium lacked the safeguards required under Article 8 of the ECHR. He also claimed that his birth certificate had not been adequately considered, he had not given his full and informed consent, and he had not been properly informed about the procedure or its consequences. Consequently, the applicant argued that Belgium should have assumed responsibility under Article 8 of the Dublin III Regulation.

First, the CALL recalled that applying the Dublin III Regulation can, in exceptional cases, risk violating Article 3 of the ECHR, particularly if there are systemic deficiencies in the receiving state's asylum system. Consequently, if there is credible, objective evidence of serious deficiencies that risk exposing an applicant to inhuman or degrading treatment, a transfer must not proceed. However, it held that such high threshold is met only in extreme cases, such as when the person would face severe material deprivation, as established by the CJEU in Jawo (19 March 2019, C-163/17).

In this case, the CALL considered that, since the F.B. v. Belgium judgment was issued shortly after the applicant's own contested age determination, the administration had a duty to take it into consideration, especially given that Belgium had not implemented any changes to its age assessment procedure since the ECtHR's ruling. Although that case focused on guardianship and not asylum responsibility under the Dublin III Regulation, the CALL found that the CGRS failed to sufficiently consider its implications when assessing the applicant's situation, particularly the risk of inhuman or degrading treatment under Article 3 of the ECHR.

Consequently, the CALL found that the applicant's vulnerability as an unaccompanied minor was not properly considered, especially since the decision relied on bone testing methods the ECtHR considered generally unreliable. As a result, the CALL concluded that a thorough reassessment of reception conditions in Spain for vulnerable applicants was necessary. It emphasised that, while it could not itself determine if Article 3 of the ECHR would be violated upon transfer, the risk of such treatment could not be ruled out and ordered the suspension of the contested decision.