Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 119
May 2009
Korelc v. Slovenia - 28456/03
Judgment 12.5.2009 [Section III]
Article 14
Discrimination
Inability of a cohabitant providing daily care to inherit tenancy: inadmissible
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for home
Inability of a cohabitant providing daily care to inherit tenancy: inadmissible
Facts: Since 1990 the applicant had lived with an 86-year-old man, A.Z., who was renting a one-room flat from the Ljubljana Municipality. He was listed on the lease contract as the person providing A.Z. with daily care who was therefore entitled to use the flat. Following A.Z.’s death, the applicant was ordered to vacate the flat, but he instituted proceedings in the domestic courts seeking the right to succeed to the tenancy. The domestic courts, however, rejected his request. They found that the applicant and A.Z. had not lived together in a long-lasting life community but rather in an economic community, which under the domestic law could not serve as a basis for the transfer of the tenancy.
Law: The applicant had lived in the flat since 1990 and had continued to live there after A.Z.’s death. The decisions of the domestic courts ordering his eviction – notwithstanding that at the date of the Court’s judgment they had not yet been enforced – affected the enjoyment of his right to respect for his home. As to the alleged difference in treatment, the applicant had never submitted that he had been in a homosexual relationship with A.Z. or complained that he had been discriminated against on the basis of his sexual orientation. Even though he maintained that he had been unable to succeed to the tenancy because he and A.Z. had been of the same sex, the domestic courts ultimately dismissed the applicant’s claim not because of his sex but rather because his relationship with A.Z. had been one of economic dependency. In addition, when dismissing the applicant’s claim, the Constitutional Court expressly held that rejecting his request on the sole ground that the two men had been of the same sex would have been unconstitutional. Instead, that court expressly stated that a relationship of economic dependency could not be interpreted as a long-lasting life community irrespective of whether it was constituted of persons of the same or opposite sexes. Gender had therefore not been a decisive element in the rejection of the applicant’s tenancy claim and, consequently, he had not been discriminated against on the ground of either his sexual orientation or his gender. The Court further held that the applicant’s situation had not been comparable to that of a married or unmarried couple, a homosexual civil partnership or close family members, all of whom under the domestic law enjoyed the right to take over a tenancy after the death of the holder. Since it was primarily for the domestic courts to interpret domestic law, which concluded that the applicant’s cohabitation with A.Z. amounted only to an economic community, and since the proceedings as a whole were fair, the difference in treatment to which the applicant had been subjected was not discriminatory: manifestly ill-founded.
The Court found a violation of Article 6 § 1 (length of proceedings) and Article 13 (effective remedy).
Article 41 – EUR 3,000 in respect of 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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