Published on 7 March 2022
FIFTH SECTION
Applications nos. 15117/21 and 15689/21
Artur MIRZOYAN against the Czech Republic
lodged on 15 March 2021
communicated on 18 February 2022
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The applicant is a Russian national living in the Czech Republic together with his wife and five children, two of which are minor (born in 2007 and 2010). The applications concern the refusal, by the Czech administrative authorities and courts, of the applicant’s application for extension of his long-term residence permit granted for business purposes (no. III. ÚS 2880/20) as well as of his application for a long-term residence permit for the purpose of family life (I. ÚS 2879/20). Both applications were dismissed on the ground that the applicant was considered to pose a threat to national security and public order, which conclusion was based on classified documents that were made partly accessible to the applicant’s lawyer but were not disclosed to the applicant himself. The authorities also concluded that the national security interests outweighed the applicant’s right to respect for family life, noting that the applicant had failed to claim any specific elements linked to his family life and parental role which should have been taken into account.
The validity of the applicant’s residence permits ended, respectively, upon the conclusion of the above proceedings. On 3 March 2021, his application for a short-term residence permit, which he lodged as an EU national family member, was dismissed and he was ordered to leave the territory of the Czech Republic within 35 days; the proceedings on the applicant’s remedies having a suspensive effect appear to be pending.
Relying on Article 8 of the Convention, the applicant submits that the authorities failed to establish all the relevant circumstances concerning his family situation and the best interest of children, having inter alia refused to hear his family members, and that they did not conduct any meaningful balancing exercise between the national security interests and his right to respect for family life.
Relying on Article 1 § 1 (a) of Protocol no. 7, the applicant complains that, having not been informed of the relevant factual elements or at least the substance of the reasons underlying the impugned decisions, he was not able to effectively exercise his procedural rights and challenge the assertion that national security was at stake.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Did the decision not to extend the applicant’s long-term residence permit and not to grant him a new one constitute an interference with the applicant’s right to respect for family life within the meaning of Article 8 § 1 of the Convention? If so, was that interference in accordance with the law and necessary in terms of Article 8 § 2 of the Convention (see, in particular, Üner v. the Netherlands [GC], no. 46410/99, ECHR 2006-XII, C.G. and Others v. Bulgaria, no. 1365/07, 24 April 2008, and Gaspar v. Russia, no. 23038/15, 12 June 2018)? In particular, did the courts engage in an adequate assessment of the applicant’s relationship with his children and of the children’s best interests and well-being and did they weigh the need to protect national security against those elements, as foreseen by the case-law of the Supreme Administrative Court (see, for example, judgments no. 5 Azs 383/2019 of 14 February 2020, no. 5 Azs 404/2019 of 16 March 2020 and no. 5 Azs 314/2020 of 8 October 2021?
2. Was Article 1 of Protocol No. 7 applicable to the proceedings complained of?
If so, did the above decisions comply with the procedural requirements of Article 1 § 1 (a) of Protocol No. 7? In particular, were the limitations imposed on the applicant’s right to be informed of the reasons of the impugned decisions compatible with that provision and counterbalanced by sufficient legal safeguards (see, notably, Muhammad and Muhammad v. Romania [GC], no. 80982/12, 15 October 2020)?