Link: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2020-11/cp200145en.pdf

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Court of Justice of the European Union

PRESS RELEASE No 145/20

Luxembourg, 24 November 2020

Judgment in Joined Cases C-225/19 and C-226/19 R.N.N.S. and K.A. v Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken

A Member State which adopts a decision refusing a ‘Schengen’ visa because of an objection raised by another Member State must indicate, in that decision, the identity of the Member State concerned and the specific ground for refusal based on that objection, accompanied, where appropriate, by the reasons for that objection

An Egyptian national, living in Egypt (Case C-225/19), and a Syrian national, living in Saudi Arabia (Case C-226/19), applied to the Minister van Buitenlandse Zaken (Minister for Foreign Affairs, Netherlands, ‘the Minister’) for ‘Schengen’ visas 1 in order to visit members of their respective families living in the Netherlands. Their applications were refused however and, in accordance with the Visa Code, that refusal was notified to them by means of a standard form, 2 containing 11 boxes to be ticked depending of the reason for the refusal. In this case, since the sixth box was ticked, the refusal of a visa was based on the fact that the persons concerned had been considered to be a threat to public order, internal security, public health or the international relations of one of the Member States. 3 That refusal of a visa was the result of objections raised by Hungary and Germany, which had been consulted beforehand by the Netherlands authorities in the context of the procedure laid down by the Visa Code. 4 However, the forms sent to the persons concerned did not give any indication of the identity of those Member States, the specific ground for refusal out of the four possibilities (threat to public order, internal security, public health or the international relations of one of the Member States) or the reasons they had been considered to be such a threat.