On March 7, 2017, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in X and X v État belge that EU member states are not required to grant entry visas based on humanitarian grounds to individuals who wish to enter their territory in order to apply for asylum, though they may do so based on their own national laws. The case concerned a Syrian family who claimed to be facing inhuman treatment in Aleppo and applied for visas at the Belgian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, with the aim of entering Belgium to apply for asylum. According to the press release, Belgian authorizes denied the visa requests because “by seeking to obtain a visa with limited territorial validity in order to apply for asylum in Belgium, the Syrian family in question clearly intended to stay more than 90 days in Belgium” and granting such a request also essentially amounted to “allowing them to make an asylum application to a diplomatic post.” The Court agreed with the Belgian authorities and held that by intending to apply for residence permits that would exceed the limits of the short-term visas they had applied for, the visa applications fell outside the scope of the EU Visa Code. Furthermore, the Court noted that the EU legislature has not adopted measures regarding long-term visas to third-country nationals on humanitarian grounds, so instance like this fall within national law and the provisions of the EU Charter do not apply.