Currently the pipeline stage `apply_patches` is executed in another pipeline compared to the ones initiated by the stage `trigger pipelines`. As a result, when running pipelines in merge requests there are always two pipelines, one for `apply_patches` and one for the testing. As the stage `apply_patches` is not part of the testing pipeline, the merge request can be merged in some cases if the the stage `apply_patches` fails. Possible approaches: Avoid running the stage `apply_patches` on all triggers, but maybe reduce it to a rule like `- if: $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"`. Also think about unifying the different pipelines.