On 28 July 2026, the District Court of the Hague delivered its judgments ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2026:21085 and ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2026:21092 following the CJEU’s preliminary rulings in Quotal and Ebilum, respectively, concerning the scope of judicial review in asylum appeals under article 46 (3) of Directive 2013/32/EU. The CJEU had held that first-instance courts may carry out their own full and ex nunc assessment of the facts and law and, where they have all the necessary elements, determine whether the applicant meets the conditions for international protection.
Applying those rulings, in the judgment following Quotal, the District Court carried out its own assessment of the applicant’s asylum claim. The case concerned a Pakistani national who had previously suffered serious harm and claimed to face a risk of persecution linked to his attributed apostasy from Islam. The Court considered his asylum account credible in its entirety and found that the risk of serious harm on account of his attributed apostasy amounted to a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of religion. It therefore concluded that the applicant qualified for refugee status.
Likewise, in the judgment following the CJEU’s ruling in Ebilum, the District Court carried out its own assessment of the asylum claims of an Iraqi family and it recognised the credibility of the applicants’ daughters’ identification with the fundamental value of equality between women and men. It further clarified that a “reasonable degree of probability” of persecution requires the risk to go beyond a mere possibility, while not requiring certainty. In light of country information concerning gender-based and honour-related violence in Iraq, the Court concluded that the daughters had a well-founded fear of persecution and qualified for refugee status. Their parents and siblings were granted a derived right of residence under Article 23 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1347.
In both judgments, the District Court decided the cases itself and instructed the Minister to issue the corresponding residence documents.