Published on 11 December 2023
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 48636/19
Mohamed Nabil MARZOUKI and Others
against Bulgaria
lodged on 5 September 2019
communicated on 22 November 2023
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the exclusion of the first applicant, a Tunisian national permanently residing in Bulgaria, from the territory of the country, resulting in his separation from his partner and his minor daughter (the second and third applicants), both of whom are Bulgarian nationals.
The first applicant had resided in Bulgaria since 2006. On 1 February 2018, after travelling abroad, he was stopped at the Serbo-Bulgarian border and refused entry into the country. He was given a standard document, indicating that he was being denied entry on public order and national security grounds.
It was only later that the first applicant learned that he had been refused entry on the basis of a decision of the State Agency for National Security of 1 February 2018. The decision imposed a ban on his entering Bulgaria for a period of five years, and contained no reasoning, referring instead of that to an internal document named a “proposal” of which the applicant was never apprised.
On 13 August 2018, after obtaining through a legal representative a copy of the decision, the first applicant applied for judicial review. However, in a final decision of 6 March 2019 the Supreme Administrative Court found his application for judicial review time-barred. It considered that the applicant had been sufficiently informed of the impugned decision already on 1 February 2018 when refused entry into Bulgaria, which is when the fourteen-day time-limit to apply for judicial review had started to run.
The three applicants complain under Article 8 and Article 13 of the Convention of the separation of their family as a result of the first applicant’s exclusion from the Bulgarian territory, and of the impossibility for the first applicant to challenge the measure in an effective manner. The applicants contend that the first of them had not been informed of the State Agency for National Security’s decision when refused entry into Bulgaria, and that the time-limit for judicial review must have started to run only after he had been served with a copy.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has there been an interference with the applicants’ right to respect for their family life, within the meaning of Article 8 § 1 of the Convention, on account of the first applicant’s exclusion from the territory of Bulgaria? If so, was that measure in accordance with the requirements of Article 8 § 2? In particular, were the applicants afforded sufficient protection from arbitrariness and were they provided with the requisite procedural guarantees (see, among other authorities, C.G. and Others v. Bulgaria, no. 1365/07, 24 April 2008; Kaushal and Others v. Bulgaria, no. 1537/08, 2 September 2010; Gaspar v. Russia, no. 23038/15, 12 June 2018; Ozdil and Others v. the Republic of Moldova, no. 42305/18, 11 June 2019)?
2. Did the applicants have at their disposal an effective domestic remedy for their complaint under Article 8, as required by Article 13 of the Convention? In particular, was the Supreme Administrative Court’s refusal to review the State Agency for National Security’s decision of 1 February 2018 justified?
APPENDIX
List of applicants:
No.
Applicant’s Name
Year of birth
1.
Mohamed Nabil MARZOUKI
1981
2.
Yana Dimitrova YANKOVA
1976
3.
Mariam Mohamed Nabil MARZOUKI
2010
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy