Judgment_paragraph 66 · Bashar Ibrahim and Others v Bundesrepublik Deutschland and Bundesrepublik Deutschland v Taus Magamadov (C-297/17, C-318/17, C-319/17, C-438/17)

66The fact remains that, while the first paragraph of Article 52 of the Procedures Directive permitted the Member States to apply their provisions implementing that directive to applications for international protection lodged before 20 July 2015, it did not compel them to do so. Since that provision offers, by using the wording ‘started after 20 July 2015 or an earlier date’, various possibilities with respect to temporal application, it is important, in order for the principles of legal certainty and equality before the law to be observed in the implementation of EU law and for applicants for international protection to be protected from arbitrariness, that each Member State bound by that directive examines applications for international protection lodged within the same period on its territory in a predictable and uniform manner (see, to that effect, judgment of 25 July 2018, Alheto, C‑585/16, EU:C:2018:584, paragraph 73).