The applicant, a Syrian national according to his own statements, requested subsidiary protection in Germany. He was expelled from Germany in June 2017. Subsequently, he repeatedly committed criminal offences and was convicted more than ten times, receiving fines as well as juvenile sentences and imprisonment. In October 2018, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) rejected his application for subsidiary protection.

The applicant appealed the decision before the Regional Administrative Court, which ordered BAMF to grant subsidiary protection. BAMF appealed the judgment before the Higher Administrative Court.

The Higher Administrative Court amended the judgment of the Regional Administrative Court and dismissed the complaint. The applicant further appealed against this decision before the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig.

The Federal Administrative Court dismissed the appeal and held that under Section 4(2), first sentence, no. 4, first alternative, of the Asylum Act, a foreign national is excluded from subsidiary protection under Section 4(1) of the Asylum Act where there are serious grounds for considering that the person constitutes a danger to the public. Such a danger must threaten society's ability to live together in security and freedom. The circumstances giving rise to that danger must be sufficiently serious to outweigh the foreign national's interest in being granted subsidiary protection.

Furthermore, the court clarified that the degree of seriousness required for establishing such a danger does not necessarily require the commission of specific criminal offences of particular gravity. Rather, it may also be established on the basis of a particular accumulation of serious legal violations which, although individually not reaching the gravity of such criminal offences, taken together give rise to a serious concern that fundamental societal interests will be impaired or that public order will be significantly disrupted to an extent that the State cannot reasonably be expected to tolerate. This interpretation of the provision is consistent with both Article 17(1)(d) of the Qualification Directive (2011/95/EU) and Article 17(1)(d) of the Qualification Regulation (2024/1347).

Thus, the Federal Administrative Court held that the Higher Administrative Court's conclusion that, at the relevant time, the claimant's cumulative legal violations justified his exclusion from subsidiary protection on the ground that he posed a danger to the public disclosed no error of law.