CEDH · CASELAW;CLIN;ENG — 16 janvier 2025

.s3ABFC313 { font-size:10pt } .sD4B5322E { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:justify } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .sA241FE93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:18pt; text-align:justify; page-break-after:avoid; border-bottom:0.75pt solid #000000; padding-bottom:1pt } .s2EF62ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:12pt } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s8F2B0B1B { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:12pt; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:12pt } .s97EB40D9 { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:14pt; page-break-after:avoid } .s65B66A85 { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:12pt } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .s5F48796F { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:justify } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s3DC36BA9 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline; color:#0069d6 } .s8B6C6D43 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; border-bottom:1pt solid #000000; padding-bottom:1pt } .sDF790F1E { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } Legal summary January 2025 A.C. v. France - 15457/20 Judgment 16.1.2025 [Section V] Article 8 Positive obligations Article 8-1 Respect for private life No protection provided to unaccompanied migrant as minor because authorities contested his minor status: violation Facts   – In 2020 the applicant, a Guinean migrant with no civil-status documents and claiming to be an unaccompanied minor, was taken into temporary emergency care by child welfare services upon his arrival in France. A forensic medical examination called into question his minor status, leading to a termination of his care. He was left to fend for himself, even though a COVID‑19 state of emergency had been declared in March 2020. He brought two actions, seeking to be taken back into the care of child welfare services and to have his basic needs provided for. After the Court issued an interim measure under Rule   39 of the Rules of Court, indicating that he should be given accommodation and food until the end of the COVID‑19 lockdown, he was housed in emergency accommodation from April 2020. In July 2020 the child protection judge confirmed that his minor status could not be established. That decision was overturned in January 2021 by the Court of Appeal, which found that the applicant was in fact a minor and ordered that he be taken into the care of child welfare services until he reached the age of majority. Law   – Article   8: (a)   Domestic and international legal provisions applicable at the relevant time   – French law provided for a number of safeguards in respect of individuals who declared to the national authorities that they were unaccompanied minors and whose status as a minor was in doubt. Many international instruments emphasised the extreme vulnerability of unaccompanied migrant children. Generally, they recognised a need to afford certain safeguards   – including outside of asylum proceedings   – and the paramount importance of the best interests of the child and of the presumption of minority in respect of unaccompanied migrant children reaching Europe. (b)   National authorities’ positive obligation to protect the applicant’s rights as an unaccompanied minor   – The Court had to determine whether, in the specific circumstances of the case, the age-assessment procedure used for the applicant, who claimed to be a minor, was attended by appropriate and adequate safeguards, which served his best interests and took into account his particular vulnerability. Those safeguards would be reflected in the provision of such information as to enable him to ensure the effective protection of his interests in the decision-making process. The French legal framework in principle afforded unaccompanied foreign minors procedural safeguards which satisfied the requirements of Article   8 of the Convention. Nevertheless, for those safeguards to be regarded as adequate in the present case, their implementation should have enabled the applicant in practice to effectively challenge the national authorities’ reasons for rebutting the presumption of minority in his respect. When the applicant had appeared before the national authorities, he had not provided a civil-status document. The administrative authority had thus relied on a body of circumstantial evidence, comprising the applicant’s answers and physical appearance, and had concluded that “it [could] not be guaranteed that he [was] a minor”. The public prosecutor had then requested a biological examination, which had found that the applicant’s biological age was over 18   years, although no conclusion could be reached with certainty in the state of scientific knowledge at the time. The applicant had been given temporary emergency care throughout the age-assessment process, in line with the presumption of minority. The results of the administrative and medical examinations had led the presumption of minority to be rebutted, and the applicant’s protection as an unaccompanied minor to be terminated accordingly. The applicant complained that he had not been sufficiently and effectively informed during his age assessment, which had prevented him from proving that he was a minor. The Court therefore examined whether the applicant had been provided with adequate information enabling him to ensure the effective protection of his interests during the decision-making process. In that connection, it noted that the findings of the assessment had not been given to the applicant and had been made available to him only in the context of the authorities’ defence in the proceedings before the Administrative Court. Furthermore, there was nothing to show that the applicant had actually received a copy of the findings of the biological examination, which, moreover, contained no mention of their inherent margin of error in the state of scientific knowledge at the time. The Court also observed that one decision did not contain any reasoning, and another had only schematic reasoning unlikely to have enlightened the applicant as to why he was no longer considered to be a minor, along with incomplete and imprecise indications of the remedies and time-limits for seeking redress. The result was an accumulation of incomplete and imprecise information provided to the applicant while his minor status was in dispute and while he should have been regarded as particularly vulnerable for that reason. The Court concluded that the presumption of minority in his respect had been rebutted in such specific conditions as to deprive him of adequate procedural safeguards. In consequence, despite the existence of a domestic legal framework which in principle afforded the requisite minimum procedural safeguards, the relevant authorities had not in the present case acted with reasonable diligence and had not complied with their positive obligation to ensure the applicant’s right to respect for his private life. Conclusion : violation (six votes to one). The Court unanimously held that there had been no violation of Article   13 in conjunction with Article   8, on the grounds that there had been remedies available to the applicant under domestic law in respect of the alleged violation of Article   8 of the Convention and that, in the light of the circumstances of the case, effective remedies had been available to him in practice. Article   41: EUR   5,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage. (See also Darboe and Camara v.   Italy , 5797/17, 21   July 2022, Legal Summary )   © Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court. To access legal summaries in English or French click here . For non-official translations into other languages click here .