A., a Somali national, applied for asylum in France. On 19 May 2022, the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) rejected his application as inadmissible, on the basis of Article L. 531-32 of the Code on the Entry and Stay of Foreigners and the Right of Asylum (CESEDA). This provision allows OFPRA to issue a decision of inadmissibility without assessing the merits of an international protection application when the applicant enjoys effective protection in another Member State of the EU. Since it had been revealed to OFPRA that A. had been a beneficiary of international protection in Italy, OFPRA rejected his application as inadmissible.

The applicant appealed the decision to the National Court of Asylum (CNDA), who overturned OFPRA's decision, granting him subsidiary protection on 26 July 2023. The CNDA held that OFPRA had relied only on evidence gathered during the personal interview conducted with A., whose statements regarding the status he enjoyed in Italy had been compared with publicly available information on the conditions of his stay and Italy's protection system. The CNDA held that OFPRA had failed to produce formal evidence proving that the applicant held current international protection in Italy. It ruled that relying exclusively on information gathered from the applicant's statements and general country information was insufficient, and thus OFPRA's decision had to be annulled.

On 26 July 2023, OFPRA lodged an appeal in cassation to the Council of State, requesting it to annul the CNDA's decision and to refer the case back to the CNDA. OFPRA argued that international protection in Italy had been proven by the evidence gathered during the applicant´s interview, which was contrasted with public resources on the Italian asylum system. Thus, the CNDA´s contention that the existence of international protection had to be established through formal proof obtained from the Italian authorities was erroneous.

In its reasoning, the Council of State held that even in the absence of formal evidence, OFPRA had sufficiently established the fact that A. enjoyed international protection in Italy, through consistent, verifiable and sufficiently detailed evidence gathered during the personal interview, having contrasted the information gathered in the interview with public resources on the conditions of stay and on the Italian asylum system. The Council of State deemed the evidence gathered by OFPRA sufficient, and considered the CNDA's request for formal proof an error of law.

In conclusion, the Council of State confirmed that under Article L. 531-32 CESEDA, OFPRA may declare an asylum application inadmissible based on credible and corroborated information establishing the existence of protection in another EU Member State, even in the absence of official documentation. The case was remanded to the CNDA for reconsideration.