WIREDGOV

According to Advocate General Cruz Villalón, a condition requiring beneficiaries of subsidiary protection to reside in a particular place constitutes a restriction of freedom of movement within a Member State.

Such a restriction is permissible only in specific situations in which serious considerations of immigration and integration policy apply, and cannot be justified on the basis that the burden of social assistance should be distributed across national territory

An EU Directive1 provides that Member States must allow freedom of movement within their territory to beneficiaries of international protection – persons who have been granted refugee status or subsidiary protection status 2 – under the same conditions and restrictions as those provided for other third-country nationals legally resident in their territories.

Under the German rules concerned, if beneficiaries of international protection are in receipt of social security benefits, a permit granted under international law or on humanitarian or political grounds is issued subject to a condition requiring residence to be taken up in a particular place. The rules state that the condition concerned is an appropriate means of ensuring that social assistance granted to foreign recipients does not place a disproportionate budgetary burden on individual Länder and municipalities. The rules also seek, with the aim of facilitating integration, to prevent the concentration of welfare-dependent foreign nationals in specific areas, which could create problems of social segregation with negative effects for integration.

Mr Alo and Ms Osso are Syrian nationals who travelled to Germany where they applied for asylum. Although their applications were unsuccessful, they were awarded social security benefits at the time the applications were made. They were subsequently granted the status of beneficiaries of subsidiary protection and were thus issued with residence permits which contained conditions about the place in which they had to reside. They both challenged those restrictions. The case has come before the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (German Federal Administrative Court), which has some doubts about whether the residence condition in question is compatible with the Directive.

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