1. This request for a preliminary ruling concerns the interpretation of Article 46 of Directive 2013/32/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 on common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection (OJ 2013 L 180, p. 60) and of Article 13 of Directive 2008/115/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals (OJ 2008 L 348, p. 98), read in the light of Articles 18, 19(2) and 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (‘the Charter’).

2. The request has been made in proceedings between, on the one hand, X and Y and, on the other, the Staatssecretaris van Veiligheid en Justitie (State Secretary for Security and Justice, Netherlands) concerning the rejection of their applications for international protection and return decisions taken in respect of them.

The Court ruled: 

'Article 46 of Directive 2013/32/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 on common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection and Article 13 of Directive 2008/115/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals, read in the light of Articles 18, 19(2) and 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, must be interpreted as not precluding national legislation which, whilst making provision for appeals against judgments delivered at first instance upholding a decision rejecting an application for international protection and imposing an obligation to return, does not confer on that remedy automatic suspensory effect even in the case where the person concerned invokes a serious risk of infringement of the principle of non-refoulement.

Thus, while the provisions of Directives 2013/32 and 2008/115 require the Member States to provide for an effective remedy against decisions rejecting an application for international protection and against return decisions, none of those provisions lays down the requirement that the Member States must grant a right to appeal to applicants for international protection whose appeals against the decision refusing their application have been unsuccessful at first instance, let alone that the exercise of such a right should be given automatic suspensory effect. Nor can such requirements be inferred from the scheme or purpose of those directives.

Nevertheless it should be pointed out that any interpretation of Directive 2008/115 or of Directive 2013/32, must — as is apparent from recital 24 of the former and recital 60 of the latter — be consistent with the fundamental rights and principles recognised, in particular, by the Charter (see, to that effect, judgment of 19 June 2018, Gnandi, C‑181/16, EU:C:2018:465, paragraph 51). In that respect, it is settled case-law of the Court that, when a Member State decides to return an applicant for international protection to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing that he will be exposed to a real risk of ill-treatment contrary to Article 18 of the Charter, read in conjunction with Article 33 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, as supplemented by the Protocol, or to Article 19(2) of the Charter, the right to an effective remedy provided for in Article 47 of the Charter requires that that applicant must have available to him a remedy enabling automatic suspension of enforcement of the measure authorising his removal (see, to that effect, judgment of 19 June 2018, Gnandi, C‑181/16, EU:C:2018:465, paragraph 54 and the case-law cited). Nevertheless, it is clear from the case-law of the Court that neither Article 46 of Directive 2013/32, nor Article 13 of Directive 2008/115, nor Article 47 of the Charter, read in the light of the safeguards laid down in Article 18 and Article 19(2) of the Charter, requires that there be two levels of jurisdiction. The only requirement is that there must be a remedy before a judicial body (see, to that effect, judgments of 28 July 2011, Samba Diouf, C‑69/10, EU:C:2011:524, paragraph 69, and of 19 June 2018, Gnandi, C‑181/16, EU:C:2018:465, paragraph 57).

In that connection, it should be stated that the introduction of a second level of jurisdiction against decisions rejecting an application for international protection and against return decisions, as well as the decision to give that level of jurisdiction, where appropriate, automatic suspensory effect, constitute — contrary to the argument relied upon by the Belgian Government set out in paragraph 17 of the present judgment — procedural rules implementing the right to an effective remedy against such decisions provided for in Article 39 of Directive 2005/85 and Article 13 of Directive 2008/115. While such procedural rules are a matter for the domestic legal order of the Member States pursuant to the principle of procedural autonomy of the latter, the Court has pointed out that those rules must observe the principles of equivalence and effectiveness (see, by analogy, judgment of 17 July 2014, Sánchez Morcillo and Abril García, C‑169/14, EU:C:2014:2099, paragraphs 31, 36 and 50 and the case-law cited, and order of 16 July 2015, Sánchez Morcillo and Abril García, C‑539/14, EU:C:2015:508, paragraph 33).