CEDH · CASELAW;COMMUNICATEDCASES;ENG — 16 mai 2024

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .s379BC09C { margin-top:36pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s10950C61 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-indent:14.2pt; text-align:justify } .s5E1364CA { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:14pt } .s339D85E6 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:14pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .s665E407E { margin-top:66pt; margin-bottom:14pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s25D5DE94 { margin-top:66pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:7pt } .s1DE04B9 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:7pt } Published on 3 June 2024   FIFTH SECTION Application no. 3958/24 Eva MENDIETA BORREGO against Spain lodged on 25 January 2024 communicated on 16 May 2024 SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE The application concerns the refusal to grant a survivor’s pension to the applicant. Under the legal regime in force in Catalonia until March 2014, civil partnerships were not required to fulfil any formal registration requirement for surviving partners to be entitled to a survivor’s pension (provided that they met other requirements). On 11 March 2014, following a judgment from the Constitutional Court, access to survivor’s pensions for civil partnerships everywhere in Spain required the partnership to have been formally registered at least two years before one of the partners’ passing away. The applicant’s partner died on 7 June 2015. Her application for a survivor’s pension was rejected on the basis of her failure to formalise the partnership at least two years prior to the death of her partner. Her subsequent appeals were dismissed. The final judicial decision was that of the Constitutional Court, declaring her amparo appeal inadmissible, on 27 October 2023. The applicant complains under Article 1 of Protocol No.   1 to the Convention. She submits that she had a legitimate expectation of receiving a survivor’s pension because she and her partner had together constituted, under Catalan civil law, a civil partnership, which rendered her eligible for a survivor’s pension following the death of her partner (if and when the other requirements were also met). Her partner had died shortly after the Constitutional Court’s judgment introduced, without any prior transitional period, a new requirement to be entitled to a survivor’s pension. She considers that the authorities failed to have regard to the objective impossibility for her to comply with the new requirement.       QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES Did the applicant’s expectation to obtain a survivor’s pension constitute a “possession” within the meaning of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (see Del Pino Ortiz and Others v. Spain [Committee], nos. 20942/19   and 3 others, §   18, 20   July 2023? If so, did the deprivation of this right strike a fair balance between her individual rights and the public interest (see Domenech Aradilla and Rodríguez González v. Spain , nos. 32667/19 and 30807/20, §   112, 19   January 2023; and Valverde Digon v. Spain , no. 22386/19, §   81, 26   January 2023)?