Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 87
June 2006
Babylonová v. Slovakia - 69146/01
Judgment 20.6.2006 [Section IV]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for home
No legal possibility to cancel the registration at the applicant’s home address of a previous owner who was unable to establish a new permanent residence: violation
Facts: In 1995 the applicant and her husband bought a house. Mr D., the former owner of the property, became homeless. Despite his and the applicant’s various attempts to have his residence status removed from the official register, Mr D. continued to be registered as permanently resident at the address in question, since under the current legislation it was impossible to obtain cancellation of the permanent residence of a citizen who was unable to be registered as permanently resident elsewhere. The applicant submitted that official mail was being sent to Mr D. at her address and that the police had once come to her home looking for him, which she maintained had implications for her reputation among her neighbours. She had also been repeatedly obliged to explain the situation in various official contexts, such as in her claims for housing benefit and fees she was charged for the removal of household waste.
Law: The Court found that the impact on the applicant’s Article 8 rights, resulting from the fact that D. could not secure his deregistration, was sufficiently serious to amount to an interference with her right to respect for private life and home. It further found that that interference derived directly from the provisions of the relevant law, which only permitted a former resident of a house to remove his or her name from the register where that person had established a new permanent residence elsewhere, which in the present case Mr D. had been unable to do. The Court did not find it established that Mr D. could set up a new permanent residence in a humanitarian establishment or that there was a lawful means for compelling him to register elsewhere if his economic position did not permit him to do so. The Government had advanced no argument in terms of public interest to justify this system. Therefore, no balance had been struck between the interests of the applicant and those of the community and there had been a failure in the domestic legal system to secure the applicant’s rights to respect for her private life and home.
Conclusion: violation (unanimous).
Article 41: EUR 1,500 for non-pecuniary damage.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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