The EU’s top court based in Luxembourg ruled Tuesday that states can deny short-term humanitarian visas to people trying to enter to claim asylum, in a case of a Syrian family trying to come to Belgium.

The decision by the  European Court of Justice in Kirchberg was seen as a test case for EU countries facing a surge in refugees in the past two years, mainly from Syria’s civil war.

In a surprise judgment, the court ruled against the family from the besieged city of Aleppo who had applied for the humanitarian visas at the Belgian embassy in the Lebanese capital Beirut last October.