Articles 28 and 29 of Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 on minimum standards for the qualification and status of third-country nationals or stateless persons as refugees or as persons who otherwise need international protection and the content of the protection granted (OJ 2004 L304, p 12), read in conjunction with articles 2(e), 3, 15, and 18, did not require a member state to grant the social welfare and health care benefits to a third-country national who had been granted leave to reside in the territory of that member state under national legislation which allowed a foreign national who suffered from an illness occasioning a real risk to his life or physical integrity or a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment to reside in that member state, where there was no appropriate treatment in that foreign national’s country of origin or in the third country in which he resided previously, unless such a foreign national was intentionally deprived of health care in that country.

The Court of Justice of the European Union so held on a preliminary reference under article 267FEU of the FEU Treaty from the Cour constitutionnelle (Constitutional Court), Belgium, in proceedings between the applicant, Mr M’Bodj, a Mauritanian national, and Belgium concerning the rejection by the Service public fédéral Sécurité sociale of the applicant’s application for loss of income allowance and income support.

THE COURT (Grand Chamber) said that Belgium would be required, pursuant to articles 28 and 29 of Directive 2004/83, to grant the benefits covered by those provisions to third-country nationals granted leave to reside in Belgium under the national legislation at issue only if the leave to remain were to be regarded as also conferring subsidiary protection status. Article 18 of Directive 2004/83 provided that member states were to grant that status to a third-country national eligible for subsidiary protection. The three types of serious harm defined in article 15 of Directive 2004/83 constituted the conditions to be fulfilled if a person is to be eligible for subsidiary protection, where, in accordance with article 2(e) of that Directive, substantial grounds had been shown for believing that the applicant faced a real risk of such harm if returned to the country of origin concerned: Elgafaji v Staatssecretaris van Justitie (Case C-465/07) EU:C:2009:94, [2009] 1 WLR 2100, para 31 and Diakité v Commissaire Général aux Réfugiés et aux Apatrides (Case C-285/12) EU:C:2014:39; [2014] 1 WLR 2477, para 18. The risks faced by a third country national of a deterioration in his state of health which was not the result of that person being intentionally deprived of health care—against which the national legislation at issue provided protection—were not covered by article 15(a) and (c) of Directive 2004/83, as harm as defined by those provisions, consisted of the death penalty or execution and serious and individual threat to a civilian’s life or person by reason of indiscriminate violence in situations of international or internal armed conflict, respectively.