Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 134
October 2010
Goţia v. Romania (dec.) - 24315/06
Decision 5.10.2010 [Section III]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for family life
Refusal to grant adoptive parent order revoking adoption: inadmissible
Facts – In 1983 the applicant and her husband were granted authorisation for the full adoption of a child born in 1976. The adoptive father died in 1992. In 2004 the applicant sought to have the adoption revoked on the ground that her adoptive daughter, then aged twenty-eight, was behaving badly towards her. Her requests were rejected. In 2006 she made a new request for an order revoking the adoption but it was declared inadmissible.
Law – Article 8: The domestic courts had found inadmissible, for lack of locus standi, the applicant’s request for revocation of the adoption because Romanian law reserved that possibility for the adopted person. In addition, the Constitutional Court, in a well-reasoned decision, had found the relevant law to be in conformity with the Constitution. Moreover, it could not be inferred from the European Convention on Child Adoption, ratified by Romania in May 1993, that the States Parties were under any obligation to pass legislation allowing an adoptive parent to have an adoption revoked. Thus, the fact of denying the applicant the right to obtain an order revoking her daughter’s adoption, twenty-one years after the adoption was granted, did not appear contrary to the provisions of Article 8. In the present case the domestic authorities had not overstepped their margin of appreciation.
Conclusion: inadmissible (manifestly ill-founded).
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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