On 1 April 2021, an amendment to the Administrative Procedure Code entered into force. This seemingly inconspicuous amendment significantly expands the power of the Supreme Administrative Court (“SAC”) to reject cassation complaints as inadmissible under Section 104a. Newly, if a cassation complaint does not substantially exceed the complainant's own interests, it may be rejected as inadmissible, and the SAC will therefore not deal with it at all.
Even before, the SAC had this power, but it was limited to proceedings in international protection cases. However, with the entry into force of the amendment, any cassation complaint in which a single judge ruled before a regional court may be assessed as inadmissible. In view of the unclear future case-law, it will therefore be advisable, as a precaution, to include directly in the cassation complaints arguments on the overriding of the complainant's own interests. These may typically be the fact that the cassation complaint concerns legal issues which have not yet been resolved or have been resolved differently. Similarly, an overriding of the complainant's own interests may be found where the regional court has grossly erred, for example, in respecting settled case-law. However, the error must always be of a serious nature, otherwise the complaint may be rejected as inadmissible.