CEDH · PRESS;GENERAL;ENG — 8 avril 2004

.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 } .s40F41F73 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s653E6C45 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6.67pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .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 } .s9793A85B { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-indent:14.2pt } .sCB9E0544 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left } .s33165EBA { font-family:Arial; font-size:8pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .s9F8EB0C0 { width:18.63pt; display:inline-block } .s9E97F54A { width:85.05pt; display:inline-block } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .sF6A12959 { width:33%; height:1px; text-align:left } .s2EB42ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:10pt }   EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS   [No.] 8.4.2004   Press release issued by the Registrar   CHAMBER JUDGMENT IN THE CASE OF HAASE v. GERMANY   The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing a judgment [1] in the case of Haase v. Germany (application no. 11057/02).   The Court held unanimously that: there had been a violation of Article   8 (right to respect for family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights; no separate issue arose under Article   6 § 1 (right to a fair hearing) of the Convention.   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction), the Court awarded the applicants 10,000   euros (EUR) for pecuniary damage, EUR   35,000 for non-pecuniary damage and EUR   8,000 for costs and expenses, less EUR 1,355 already received from the Council of Europe for legal aid. (The judgment is available only in English.)   1.     Principal facts   The applicants, Cornelia and Josef Haase, are German nationals, born respectively in 1968 and 1967 and living in Altenberge (Germany).   Mrs Haase has 12 children, seven being from a previous marriage. Following her divorce in 1993, she was awarded custody of her three youngest children, one born in 1990 and twins in 1992. She married Mr Haase in 1994. They had five children together, born in: 1995, 1998, 2000, 2001 and 2003.   In 2001 the applicants requested family aid and agreed to a psychological assessment of their family situation. On 17 December 2001 the expert responsible for the assessment reported that the children’s normal development was in jeopardy, that their parents were often unreasonably harsh and had beaten them and that any further contact between them should be severed. The same day, without hearing the parents or the children, Münster District Court issued an interim injunction withdrawing the applicants’ parental rights over the seven children living with them.   On 18 December 2001 the district court prohibited all access between the applicants and the seven children. The same day the children were taken from their schools, a nursery and home and were placed in three different, unidentified foster homes. The seven-day-old baby was taken directly from the maternity hospital and has, since that time, been living with a foster family.   On 1 March 2002, without holding a hearing, Hamm Court of Appeal dismissed the applicants’ appeal.   On 21 June 2002 the Federal Constitutional Court set aside the decisions of 17 December 2001 and 1 March 2002, finding that there were serious doubts about whether the courts had had due regard to the parents’ rights and the principle of proportionality. In addition, the question of whether the evidence established that there was a risk of harm to the children had not been adequately considered. The decision of 18 December 2001, prohibiting contact between the applicants and the children, remained in force.   The case was referred back to the district court. On 6 March 2003, the district court withdrew the applicants’ parental rights over the seven children and prohibited access to them until June 2004. The court also prohibited Mrs Haase from contacting three of her four eldest children before the end of 2004 and her eldest son before he reached the age of majority. The applicants appealed.     2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application was lodged on 6 March 2002 and declared admissible on 23 January 2003.   Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:   Ireneu Cabral Barreto (Portuguese), President , Georg Ress (German), Lucius Caflisch (Swiss) [2] , Pranas Kūris (Lithuanian), Boštjan Zupančič (Slovenian), Margarita Tsatsa-Nikolovska (Macedonian), Kristaq Traja (Albanian), judges , and also Vincent Berger , Section Registrar .     3.     Summary of the judgment [3]   Complaints   The applicants complained about their parental rights being withdrawn and the children being taken into care. They also complained about the way the decision concerning the care of their children was implemented and that they had been denied a fair hearing. They relied on Articles 8 and 6 § 1.     Decision of the Court   Article 8   The Court recalled that the Federal Constitutional Court had found that the provisional withdrawal of the applicants’ parental rights and the removal of the children were not supported by relevant and sufficient reasons and that the applicants were not sufficiently involved in the decision-making process.   The Court also observed that, before public authorities had recourse to emergency measures concerning such delicate issues as care orders, the imminent danger should be actually established. It was true that in obvious cases of danger no involvement of the parents was called for. However, if it was still possible to hear the parents of the children and to discuss with them the necessity of the measure, there should be no call for emergency action, in particular when the danger had persisted over a long period. There was therefore no urgency justifying the District Court’s interim injunction.   In addition, suddenly taking six children from their respective schools, kindergarten and from home, placing them in unidentified foster homes, and forbidding all contact with their parents, went beyond what was necessary in the situation and could not be accepted as proportionate.   In particular, the removal of the new-born baby from the hospital was an extremely harsh measure. It was traumatic for the mother and placed her own physical and mental health under strain. It deprived the new-born baby of close contact with its natural mother and of the advantages of breast-feeding. The removal also deprived the father of close contact with his daughter after her birth.   It was not for the Court to take the place of the German authorities and to speculate as to the best child care measures in the case. The Court was aware of the problems facing the authorities in situations where emergency steps had to be taken. If no action was taken, there existed the real risk that harm would occur to the child and that the authorities would be held to account for their failure to intervene. At the same time, if protective steps were taken, the authorities tended to be blamed for unacceptable interference with the right to respect for family life. However, when contemplating such a drastic measure for the mother - taking away her new-born child immediately after birth - it was incumbent on the competent national authorities to examine whether some less intrusive interference into family life, at such a critical point in the lives of the parents and child, was not possible.   There had to be extraordinarily compelling reasons before a baby could be physically removed from the care of its mother, against her will, immediately after birth, as a consequence of a procedure in which neither she nor her husband had been involved. The Court was not satisfied that such reasons had been shown to exist.   Although the contested decision of 17   December 2001 had been set aside, it formed the basis of the continuing separation of the applicants and the children. Experience showed that when children remained in the care of youth authorities for a protracted period, a process was set in motion, driving them towards an irreversible separation from their family. When a considerable period of time had passed since the children were first placed in care, the children’s interest in not undergoing further changes to their family situation might prevail over the parents’ interest in seeing the family reunited. The possibilities of reunification would be progressively diminished and eventually destroyed if the biological parents and the children were not allowed to meet each other at all. Moreover, the draconian step of removing the applicants’ daughter shortly after her birth from her mother could in the Court’s opinion only lead to the child’s alienation from her parents and siblings and could endanger family relations. The measures taken, because of their immediate impact and their consequences, were therefore difficult to redress.   The Court concluded that the decision of 17 December 2001, the unjustified failure to allow the applicants to participate in the decision-making process leading to that decision, the methods used in implementing that decision, in particular the draconian step of taking away Mrs Haase’s new-born daughter shortly after her birth, and the irreversibility of those measures were not supported by relevant and sufficient reasons and could not be regarded as having been “necessary” in a democratic society. Consequently, there had been a violation of Article 8.   Article 6 § 1   The Court did not find it necessary to examine separately the applicants’ complaints raised under Article 6 § 1 as they corresponded with the complaints already raised under Article   8.     ***   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. [1] Under Article 43 of the European Convention on Human Rights, within three months from the date of a Chamber judgment, any party to the case may, in exceptional cases, request that the case be referred to the 17 ‑ member Grand Chamber of the Court. In that event, a panel of five judges considers whether the case raises a serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention or its protocols, or a serious issue of general importance, in which case the Grand Chamber will deliver a final judgment. If no such question or issue arises, the panel will reject the request, at which point the judgment becomes final. Otherwise Chamber judgments become final on the expiry of the three-month period or earlier if the parties declare that they do not intend to make a request to refer. [2]   Judge elected in respect of Liechtenstein. [3] This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.