CEDH · PRESS;GENERAL;ENG — 9 octobre 2003

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .s5FFF0A77 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:1pt } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .sFE10DC93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s94935B0F { width:389.85pt; display:inline-block } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .s6B505E72 { margin:0pt; padding-left:0pt } .s1C7BEF1E { margin-left:28.52pt; padding-left:7.48pt; font-family:serif } .s2E932ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:11pt } .sCB9E0544 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left } .s61E420C2 { font-family:Arial; font-variant:small-caps } .sAEB48DD { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; page-break-after:avoid } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s33165EBA { font-family:Arial; font-size:8pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .s9F8EB0C0 { width:18.63pt; display:inline-block } .s9E97F54A { width:85.05pt; display:inline-block } .sF6A12959 { width:33%; height:1px; text-align:left } .s2EB42ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:10pt } .s3133A7C8 { font-family:Arial; color:#0069d6 }   EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS     486   9.10.2003   Press release issued by the Registrar   GRAND CHAMBER JUDGMENT IN THE CASE OF SLIVENKO v. LATVIA   The European Court of Human Rights has today delivered at a public hearing in Strasbourg a judgment in the case of Slivenko v. Latvia (application no. 48321/99).   The Court held: by 11 votes to six, that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private life and home) of the European Convention on Human Rights; by 11 votes to six, that it was not necessary to deal separately with the applicants’ complaints under Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the Convention; by 16 votes to one, that there had been no violation of Article 5 § 1 (right to liberty and security); unanimously, that it was not necessary to consider the applicants’ complaints under Article 5 § 4 (right to have lawfulness of detention decided speedily by a court).   The Court held, by 11 votes to six, that each of the applicants was to be paid 10,000 euros (EUR) for non-pecuniary damage. (The judgment is available in English and in French.)   1.     Principal facts   The applicants, Tatjana Slivenko and her daughter Karina Slivenko, are former Latvian residents of Russian origin. They now live in Kursk, Russia.   Tatjana Slivenko, whose father was an officer in the army of the Soviet Union, was born in Estonia in 1959 and moved to Latvia with her parents when she was one month old. She married another Soviet officer, Nikolaj Slivenko, in 1980 and Karina was born in Latvia in 1981.   After Latvia regained its independence, the applicants were entered on the register of Latvian residents as “ex-USSR citizens”. In 1994 the first applicant’s husband, who had been discharged from the army during that year (the Russian Federation having assumed jurisdiction over the former Soviet armed forces in January 1992), applied for a temporary residence permit on the basis of his marriage to a permanent resident. His application was refused on the ground that he was required to leave Latvia in accordance with the treaty of April 1994 on the withdrawal of Russian troops which applied in particular to Russian officers in service on 28 January 1992. As a result, the registration of the applicants was annulled.   The deportation of all three family members was ordered in August 1996. They were evicted from their flat in Riga and Nikolaj Slivenko subsequently moved to Russia. The applicants, however, brought a court action challenging their removal from Latvia. The Latvian courts ultimately found that Nikolaj Slivenko was required to leave and that the decision to annul the applicants’ registration was lawful.   On 28 October 1998 the applicants were arrested and detained in a centre for illegal immigrants. They were released the following day on the order of the Director of the Citizenship and Migration Authority, on the ground that their arrest was “premature”, since an appeal had been lodged with the authority. However, they were later ordered to leave the country and on 16 March 1999 the second applicant was again detained for 30 hours.   On 11 July 1999 they moved to Russia to join Nikolaj Slivenko and subsequently adopted Russian citizenship. The applicants’ deportation order prevented them from returning to Latvia for five years (until August 2001) and then limited their visiting time to 90 days a year. Tatjana Slivenko’s parents, who, she maintained, were seriously ill, remained in Latvia.     2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 28 January 1999 and transmitted to the Grand Chamber of the Court on 14 June 2001. A hearing on the admissibility and merits of the case took place on 14 November 2001. It was declared partly admissible on 23 January 2002.   Judgment was given by the Grand Chamber of 17 judges, composed as follows:   Luzius Wildhaber (Swiss), President , Christos Rozakis (Greek), Jean-Paul Costa (French), Georg Ress (German), Nicolas Bratza (British), Jerzy Makarczyk (Polish), Ireneu Cabral Barreto (Portuguese) Françoise Tulkens (Belgian) , Viera Strážnická (Slovakian) , Peer Lorenzen (Danish) , Margarita Tsatsa-Nikolovska (Macedonian) , Hanne Sophie Greve (Norwegian) , András Baka (Hungarian) , Rait Maruste (Estonian) , Kristaq Traja (Albanian) , Snejana Botoucharova (Bulgarian), Anatoli Kovler (Russian), judges , and also Paul Mahoney , Registrar .     3.     Summary of the judgment [1]   Complaints   The applicants complained under Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life), Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) and Article 5 §§ 1 and 4 (right to liberty and security) of the European Convention on Human Rights.   Decision of the Court   Article 8 The Court noted that Tatjana Slivenko had moved to Latvia when she was one month old and had lived there until the age of 40. She had been to school, worked and married in Latvia. Karina was born in Latvia and lived there until she was 18, after completing her secondary education. Both applicants had therefore developed, since birth, a network of personal, social and economic ties constituting a private life in Latvia . They also lost the flat where they had lived. Their removal from Latvia therefore constituted an interference with their private life and home.   However, the measures taken by the Latvian authorities did not break up their family, since the deportation concerned all three members of the family unit and there was no right under the Convention to choose in which country to continue or re-establish family life. Tatjana’s parents were adults not belonging to the core family and who had not been shown to be dependent on her family. However, Tatjana’s links with her parents had to be taken into account in the context of her private life.   The treaty on the withdrawal of Russian troops – which was the principal legal basis for the applicants’ deportation - was not in force when the applicants were registered as “ex-USSR citizens”. However, domestic law could later be legitimately interpreted and applied in the light of the treaty. In addition, the applicants must have been able to foresee to a reasonable degree, at least with legal advice, that they would be regarded as covered by the treaty. In any event, the decisions of the courts did not appear arbitrary. The applicants’ removal could accordingly be considered to have been “in accordance with the law”.   Taking into account the wider context of the constitutional and international law arrangements made after Latvia regained independence, the Court accepted that the treaty and implementing measures had sought to protect the interests of national security. It could also be said that the arrangement respected family life in that it did not interfere with the family unit. The withdrawal of active servicemen and their families could be considered similar to a transfer in the course of normal service. Moreover, the continued presence of active servicemen of a foreign army might be seen as incompatible with the sovereignty of an independent State and a threat to national security. The public interest in the removal of them and their families would therefore normally outweigh the individual’s interest in staying.   However, removal measures might not always be justified. For example, they did not apply to the same extent to retired officers and their families.   The fact that Nikolaj Slivenko had retired by the time proceedings were brought concerning the legality of the applicants’ stay in Latvia had made no difference to the determination of their status. Yet, it appeared - from information provided by the Latvian Government about treatment of certain hardship cases - that the authorities considered they had some latitude allowing them to ensure respect for private and family life and home. Although decisions were taken on a case-by-case basis, however, the authorities did not appear to have examined whether each person presented a specific danger to national security or public order, the public interest having been perceived rather in abstract terms. A scheme for withdrawal of foreign troops and their families based on a general finding that their removal was necessary for national security was not as such incompatible with Article   8, but implementation of such a scheme without any possibility of taking into account individual circumstances was.   The applicants were integrated into Latvian society at the time and could not be regarded as endangering national security because they were part of Tatjana’s father’s family, who had retired in 1986, had remained in the country and was not himself considered to present any such danger. In all the circumstances, the applicants’ removal could not be regarded as having been necessary in a democratic society.   Article 14 The Court found that it was unnecessary to rule on this complaint.   Article 5 § 1 The Court noted that neither of the arrest warrants lacked a statutory basis in domestic law and that there was no evidence that the police had acted in bad faith or arbitrarily. Consequently, the applicants’ detention was in accordance with Article 5 § 1 (f).   Article 5 § 4 The Court found that it was unnecessary to examine the merits of this complaint, as the applicants had been released speedily before any judicial review of the lawfulness of their detention could take place and Article 5 § 4 did not deal with remedies which might serve to review the lawfulness of detention which had already ended.     Judge Kovler expressed a concurring opinion in relation to Article 8 and a dissenting opinion concerning Article 5 § 1, Judges Wildhaber, Ress, Bratza, Cabral Barreto, Greve and Maruste expressed a joint dissenting opinion, and, Judge Maruste expressed a further separate dissenting opinion, all of which are annexed to the judgment.     ***   The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ).     Registry of the European Court of Human Rights F – 67075 Strasbourg Cedex Press contacts:   Roderick Liddell (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 24 92)   Emma Hellyer (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 90 21 42 15)   Stéphanie Klein (telephone: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 21 54) Fax: +00 33 (0)3 88 41 27 91   The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. Since 1 November 1998 it has sat as a full-time Court composed of an equal number of judges to that of the States party to the Convention. The Court examines the admissibility and merits of applications submitted to it. It sits in Chambers of 7 judges or, in exceptional cases, as a Grand Chamber of 17 judges. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe supervises the execution of the Court’s judgments. More detailed information about the Court and its activities can be found on its Internet site.   [1] .     This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.