Student beats Belgium’s medical school barrier in EU court

Belgium cannot apply its medical school quota for nonresidents to students who completed substantial schooling and earned their secondary school diploma in the country, EU judges ruled.(CN) — Living across the border should not erase years spent in a country’s classrooms, Europe’s top court ruled Thursday in a would-be doctor’s challenge to Belgium’s admissions rules.The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in favor of Axel Dris, a Luxembourg national who passed a Belgian medical entrance exam but was denied admission under a quota for nonresidents. He sought to overturn the refusal to issue his admission certificate. Belgium’s Council of State asked the European court whether applying the quota to students in his position complied with EU law.The judges found that using residence to limit access disadvantaged nationals of other EU countries, who were less likely than Belgians to live in Belgium. Protecting public health may justify such a distinction, but the rules must go no further than necessary.Belgium’s concern was keeping enough trained doctors to provide good healthcare locally. The court accepted that students living in the country might be more likely to stay for work after graduating, but residence can’t be the only way to demonstrate a meaningful connection.“In that context, it must be stated that that real and effective degree of connection with a member state resulting from school education completed in that member state is not called into question merely because the students concerned, such as the applicant in the main proceedings, travel, from a member state in which they reside, to the member state in which they pursue their secondary education,” the court said.Because the rules offered no alternative to the residence test, the court held that Belgium went too far. EU law barred applying the quota to candidates who have completed a significant part of their schooling in Belgium and obtained their secondary school diploma there while living in another EU country.For Dris, the border had long been part of an ordinary school day. According to Luxembourg media reports, he grew up in Eischen, near Belgium, and attended primary and secondary school in Arlon because it was closest to home. He wanted to become a doctor like his father.Then came the 2022 entrance exam. He passed, but certificates for nonresidents were capped at 30% of all successful candidates in his stream. Their scores determined who made the cut, and Dris’s ranking left him out. By January 2026, Virgule reported, he was studying European law at the University of Luxembourg after earning a law degree in Namur. He represented himself before the European court.Dris said he was relieved after the long proceedings. “Beyond my own situation, I hope this judgment will become a useful precedent for students across Europe and help ensure that others in a similar position can rely on their rights without having to go through the same difficulties.”Niamh Nic Shuibhne, professor of European Union law at the University of Edinburgh, said the court had reinforced established principles: “I think that it is a careful consolidation of principles established in previous case law.” She said a student’s ties to a country had to be real and meaningful, but judging those ties by home address alone went further than needed to protect public health.The judgment also requires evidence behind the public health justification: Authorities must establish a genuine risk to healthcare provision. They may not simply assume every nonresident graduate would leave; residents might also work abroad, while doctors trained elsewhere might move in.Anne Pieter van der Mei, professor of European social law at Maastricht University, said Dris’s Belgian schooling gave him genuine ties to the country where he might eventually put his medical training to work. “One may perhaps understand the fears of Member States like Belgium for student tourism but it is hard to see how students like Axel Dris affect Belgium’s educational or public health interests.”Dris also sought an urgent suspension of the refusal in September 2022, but Belgium’s Council of State rejected that initial request.The judges declined to examine a separate agreement allowing certain University of Luxembourg students to continue medical training in French-speaking Belgium. That route concerned later studies, rather than the first-year admission Dris sought. The government of Belgium’s French Community did not respond to a request for comment.The European ruling is final and cannot be appealed. But it did not itself award Dris a medical school place: Belgium’s Council of State must now resolve his challenge in line with the court’s interpretation of EU law. The European answer is settled, but the Belgian decision remains to be made.Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads