A.N., an Afghan national, was provided subsidiary protection in Slovakia on 28 June 2011, which was extended several times.

On 9 September 2024, the applicant applied for the extension of subsidiary protection, for which he was interviewed twice, in which he stated that the reason for his application was a fear of the Taliban and a fear of revenge from a family.

The Migration Office received from the Slovak Information Service (SIS) and the Military Intelligence, information concerning the applicant which had noted that the applicant posed a security risk as he was reasonably suspected of carrying out activities in the illegal migration sector. Another SIS decision which was classified was added to the file which was however not consulted by the applicant. The applicant was informed of the SIS's unclassified position and commented on it to the effect that he had never been prosecuted or investigated, was not aware of any wrongdoing for alleged involvement in the organisation of illegal migration, worked as a taxi driver, met with many people, most of them from India, Iran and Pakistan. She has three minor children in Slovakia who she feeds and lives in an orderly relationship with her mate.

By decision of 9 January 2025, the Ministry decided not to extend subsidiary protection considering the information it had received from SIS.

By judgment of 30 April 2025, the Administrative Court in Bratislava set aside the contested decision and referred the case back to the Migration Office for further consideration on the ground that it was not open to review for lack of grounds and incomprehensibility. The Administrative Court found that the Migration Office did not assess the classified SIS opinion as evidence, but merely took it uncritically, thus de facto transferring the decision to SIS, along with other deficiencies.

The Migration Office appealed in cassation before the Supreme Administrative Court, which dismissed the complaint by judgment of 26 September 2025.

The Migration Office argued that by means of an error of procedure, the Administrative Court prevented a party from exercising its procedural rights to the extent that the right to a fair trial had been infringed and that the Administrative Court had ruled on the basis of an error of law in the assessment of the case.

The Supreme Administrative Court held that the complainant was not deprived of the possibility of effectively exercising procedural rights.

Regarding the SIS opinion, the court added that, the administration is limited in its assessment of the SIS opinion by the fact that a critical part of the information is classified. The court noted that the administrative authority acted lawfully by communicating to the applicant, for the non-classified part of the SIS opinion, the essence of the security risk - suspicion of involvement in activities in the field of illegal migration. Since the applicant was aware of the reason why he was classified as a security risk and had the opportunity to comment on that claim, the court noted that this satisfies the adversarial requirement to the extent objectively possible in proceedings involving classified information. The court observed that the Constitutional Court decision PL. ÚS 15/2020 of 15 March 2023 stressed the need for an autonomous evaluation of the supporting documents. However, the court noted that this cannot be interpreted as meaning that the administrative authority is required to refute every argument of a foreign national if it is required to disclose the content of the classified part of the opinion. Furthermore, the court reminded that the principle of equality of arms cannot be understood absolutely, as national security proceedings do not require a participant to have identical access to evidence as an administrative authority and it is sufficient if the party has been informed of the substance of the classified information by means of information from the SIS non-classified opinion and if the party has had the opportunity to present their own version of the events and they have been taken into account. The court further added that the case law of the ECtHR also allows restrictions in the interests of national security, Finally, the court was given the opportunity to consult classified information and thus to examine whether the decision was arbitrary, which ensured procedural protection even without the administration responding to each of the applicant's arguments.

However, the court noted that the authority's decision does not contain the legal reasoning required by the principle of proportionality and does not answer the question of the public interest on which such an interference with the applicant's rights is based. The court noted that both the asylum authority and the administrative courts must be able to assess the credibility and persuasiveness of classified information. After reading the classified information, the Supreme Administrative Court considered that the information submitted does not meet the criteria of credibility and persuasion, which would allow the court to make any judgment as to its content.

In addition, the court observed that the administrative authority was obliged by the principle of proportionality to carry out a three step assessment which was absent from the decision: 1) Suitability: why the non-renewal of subsidiary protection was capable of achieving the objective of protecting national security; 2) Necessity: whether there is a less onerous measure in relation to the applicant's rights; 3) Adequacy: how the alleged security risks outweighed the interference with the applicant's rights (long-term residence, family ties, previous residence status, absence of criminal prosecution, previously unproblematic life). Moreover, the court observed that the proportionality test in procedures for international protection must also include a reflection on non-refoulement obligations under international law and the current security situation in the country of origin, while in this case the authority had an up-to-date report on the situation in the province of Nangarhar, but it did not set out its content in the statement of reasons. Therefore, it did not answer to how the alleged security risk in the territory of the Slovak Republic was weighed against the potential risks for the applicant in the event of a possible return to Afghanistan in the current circumstances.