According to the court's press release: 

"In March 2022, UB, a Chinese national of Uyghur origin, arrived in the Netherlands with his Ukrainian wife and their child. There, he lodged an application for asylum. The Netherlands authorities granted him temporary protection in his capacity as a family member of a Ukrainian national residing in Ukraine with their child prior to 24 February 2022, and suspended the examination of his asylum application until the expiry of that period of protection.

In early 2024, UB complained that the Netherlands Minister for Asylum and Immigration had failed to take a decision on his application for asylum within the time limits laid down by EU law. In the absence of any reply, he brought the matter before The Hague District Court, which ordered the Minister to adjudicate on the asylum application.

On appeal, the Netherlands Council of State asked the Court of Justice whether EU law 3 permits the automatic suspension, until the expiry of the period of temporary protection, of the examination of an asylum application lodged by a person enjoying temporary protection.

In its judgment, the Court of Justice first of all points out that objective of temporary protection is to provide immediate and minimum guarantees to displaced persons within the Member States, in particular where there is a risk that the Member States' asylum system will be unable to deal with the mass influx of applications for international protection.

The Court observes that EU law permits a beneficiary of temporary protection to lodge an application for international protection and that the rejection of that application does not result in the loss of temporary protection status, as the two procedures may proceed simultaneously and independently. 

Furthermore, the application of the directives on the handling of applications for international protection in no way excludes applicants who are already enjoying temporary protection; consequently, the general rules laid down in those directives apply to them. The time limits which those directives lay down therefore apply when examining an application for international protection, irrespective of whether the applicant already enjoys temporary protection. That said, EU law nevertheless permits Member States to extend the time limits for examining applications for international protection where objective reasons justify this, in particular the administrative difficulties that may be caused by the increase in the number of applications for international protection lodged simultaneously.

Lastly, a generalised and automatic suspension of the examination of applications for international protection during the period of temporary protection would run counter to the very purpose of that protection, namely preserving the real opportunity for applicants to obtain international protection following an appropriate examination of their individual situation, whilst guaranteeing them, with immediate effect, protection on a lesser scale.

The Court notes, finally, that it cannot be ruled out that, exceptionally, the submission, over a short period, of a considerable number of applications for international protection will make it objectively impossible for a Member State to examine all those applications in strict compliance with the required time limits. This situation may then lead the authorities to take measures such as the phased examination of the applications, where appropriate by setting priorities to that end. The national court must then ensure that any exceeding of the applicable time limits is not the result of a generalised and automatic suspension of the examination of the applications for international protection lodged by beneficiaries of temporary protection, but results solely from the measures necessary to deal with an objective impossibility of complying with those time limits. "