Decision on the asylum application
When the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has made a decision on your asylum application, you will be sent a written notice. This will be sent to the most recent postal address known to the BAMF.
It is important for you to always keep the BAMF informed of your most current address. If you do not do so and the notice is sent to the wrong address, it will be deemed as received nevertheless. This might lead to a situation where the deadline for any appeals against the decision has expired. In the event that your asylum application is rejected, you will then no longer have any possibility of taking action against it.
The notice is positive (or approved) if any of the following has been established:
The notice constitutes a rejection if you have not been granted a right to asylum, or refugee status or subsidiary protection - and there is no deportation stop to your country of origin and there has been an order issued to deport you to your country of origin.
There are different forms of rejection:
The application for asylum can be rejected as “unfounded”. In this case you have two weeks to appeal against the rejection at the responsible administrative court. Your asylum application will then be reviewed once again by the administrative court. As a rule, oral hearings are held before a decision is made. The proceedings can last for years.
The application can also be rejected as “obviously unfounded” if you come from what is known as a secure country of origin (EU countries, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ghana, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Senegal, Serbia). In such a case, you have only one week to appeal against this decision. In addition, the deportation cannot be delayed on the basis of the appeal. In order to prevent deportation before the legal proceedings have come to a conclusion, you must lodge an emergency petition against the order pursuant to Section 80(5) of the German Code of Administrative Procedure (“§80 Abs. 5 VwGO”). The court will decide in a few weeks.
It is also possible that part of the asylum application is rejected (for example, protection as a refugee), but part is granted (for example, subsidiary protection). In this case, you can appeal against the part that is rejected within 2 weeks.
The actions you can take against rejection of an asylum application can be found under “information on right to appeal” (“Rechtsmittelbelehrung”) on the last page of the notice. This section also names the court at which the appeal must be lodged and the deadline by which the appeal and (where necessary) an emergency petition must be made.
If you receive a rejection, you should obtain assistance – for example from a counseling service for asylum seekers.