The BAMF sought leave of appeal against the Regional Administrative Court of Hanover decision in a case where the latter annulled BAMF decision to revoke international protection for a Syrian national who was criminally convicted for human trafficking. The regional court concluded that no act of the United Nations (UN) declared human trafficking as being contrary to the aims and principles of the UN.

The Higher Administrative Court of Lower Saxony ruled on the question whether a third country national can be excluded from international protection or his status can be revoked on grounds of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the UN, pursuant to Section 3(2) sentence 1 no.3 jointly with sentence 2 of the Asylum Act, for committing crimes related to human smuggling. The court assessed that the question was not of fundamental importance in view of Section 78 (3) of the Asylum Act because the Regional Administrative Court of Hanover sufficiently justified that the revocation of refugee status based on the criminally established commercial smuggling of foreigners could not be classified as contrary to the aims and principles of the United Nations. The court considered that there are various degrees of severity of smuggling offenses, and the question cannot be addressed in a general manner, since it requires an assessment of each individual case.

The court reiterated the reasoning and findings of the lower court which based its assessment on the interpretation of Article 12 (2)(c) of the recast Qualification Directive (QD) and the CJEU jurisprudence, namely Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (le Commissaire Général aux Réfugiés et aux Apatrides; de Commissaris-generaal voor de vluchtelingen en de staatlozen; CGRS; CGRA; CGVS) v Mostafa Lounani (Case C-573/14, 31 January 2017). It stated that recital 31 of the recast QD expressly mentions that acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the UN are set out in the preamble and in Articles 1 and 2 of the UN Charter and UN resolutions on counter-terrorism measures, meaning that, for an act to be considered contrary to the UN principles, it has to be recognised in an UN international convention such as a resolution, declaration, or agreement. Those resolutions can include, for example, crimes that threaten international peace, international security, and peaceful relations between states, as well as serious and persistent violations of human rights. However, historically, the legislative provision set under Article 1F(c) of the Refugee Convention intended to target individuals who had a strong connection with the state and had a position of power, thus entailing a narrow concept. Comparatively, it found that UNHCR and other states, for example Canada, do not consider appropriate to include drug trafficking or human trafficking within the scope of Article 1F (c) although UN acknowledge it is an extremely serious problem, and significant efforts are made to combat it.

Based on the abovementioned, the court ruled that the revocation of refugee status based on the criminally established commercial smuggling of foreigners cannot be classified as an act contrary to the UN purposes and principles. It noted that the applicant did not hold an official state or quasi-state position of power, and he did not commit acts of international terrorism. Also, the court affirmed that even in cases related to international terrorism, which usually fall within the ground for exclusion as acts contrary to the UN principles, however not every act is sufficient since the activities must be substantiated.

The BAMF argued the case by comparing commercial smuggling with terrorism acts but the court affirmed that the CJEU jurisprudence, Germany v B and D, (C-57/09 and C-101/09, 9 November 2010), and the case law of the Federal Administrative Court applied the exclusion ground of Article 12(2)(c) of the recast QD to cases related to membership in an international terrorist organisation as based on recital 31 of the recast QD. The latter expressly mentions that actions contrary to the aims and principles of the United Nations are "enshrined, inter alia, in the UN resolutions on counter-terrorism measures, which declare that 'the acts, methods and practices of terrorism are contrary to the aims and principles of the UN' and that 'the knowing financing and planning of terrorist acts, as well as incitement to such acts, are also contrary to the aims and principles of the UN'." 

The court found that while the UN Security Council Resolutions 1373 (2001) and 1377 (2001) refer to acts of terrorism, a consistent and express reference to human smuggling is not apparent in the UN objectives on human rights and not comparable even though human smuggling appears as a recurrent issue for EU and Germany due to dangers to both individual rights and security of states. The court concluded that the interpretation must be restrictive since an extension of the provision to activities of any individual would require an express mention and unambiguous statement stemming from the UN as noticed in the resolutions concerning acts of interventional terrorism.