Legal summary
April 2026
M.V. and Others v. Belgium - 52836/22, 57898/22, 3913/23 et al.
Judgment 9.4.2026 [Section I]
Article 3
Degrading treatment
National authorities, having failed to fulfil their legal obligation to provide accommodation and material support to applicants for international protection, held responsible for their extremely precarious living conditions on the street for months on end: violation
Article 6
Article 6-1
Access to court
Unreasonable delays in enforcement by national authorities of final decisions requiring State to provide accommodation and material support to applicants for international protection: violation
Article 34
Hinder the exercise of the right of application
Unreasonable delays in application by national authorities of interim measures issued by Court indicating that they should enforce decisions by domestic courts requiring them to provide accommodation and material support to applicants for international protection: violation
Article 46
Article 46-2
Execution of judgment
General measures
Respondent State required to address systemic problem, identified in Camara v. Belgium, affecting national authorities’ ability to comply with law on asylum-seekers’ right to accommodation, including final court decisions ordering such compliance
Facts – The applicants, four adults who had applied for international protection, lived for several months without material support or accommodation in Belgium. That was despite final decisions by the Employment Tribunal ordering the Belgian State to grant them such assistance in accordance with its legal obligations, and despite interim measures indicated by the European Court under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court.
Law – Article 3:
The four applicants for international protection had depended on the material support provided for under domestic law to meet their basic needs. They were entitled to such assistance on the condition that they had been granted permission to remain in the country as asylum-seekers.
Unlike the applicants in the case of N.H. and Others v. France, the applicants in the present case had been able to lodge their application for international protection as soon as they had arrived in Belgium. In breach of domestic law, however, no accommodation or material support had been provided to them, because the reception network for applicants for international protection in Belgium was saturated.
The applicants had lived and slept on the street, in extremely precarious conditions, from the time they had applied for international protection until they had been assigned a place in a reception centre, that is, for between 111 and 338 days.
Since the Belgian authorities had breached their legal obligation to provide accommodation to the applicants, they had to be held responsible for the conditions in which the applicants had lived for several months, including during the winter – on the street, with no resources or access to sanitary facilities, lacking any means of providing for their essential needs and in constant fear for their safety. The Court found that the applicants had thus been victims of degrading treatment that had entailed a lack of respect for their dignity. A level of severity sufficient to engage Article 3 of the Convention had been exceeded as a result of those living conditions, together with the lack of an appropriate response from the Belgian authorities – even though the applicants had given notice on many occasions of their inability to secure practical enjoyment of their rights and to meet their essential needs.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 6 § 1:
In order to assess the delay in enforcement of the Employment Tribunal’s decisions concerning the applicants with regard to the requirements of Article 6 of the Convention, the Court had to take into account the conduct of the competent authorities, the complexity of the enforcement proceedings and the applicants’ own conduct.
First, as regards the conduct of the Belgian authorities, the enforcement of the final court decisions given in the applicants’ favour had not been spontaneous and had only taken place as the result of an interim measure indicated by the Court, which had itself been applied after some delay. In particular, the relevant decisions of the Employment Tribunal had been enforced in part through the provision of accommodation for the applicants between 67 and 262 days after those decisions had become final.
Second, regarding the complexity of the enforcement proceedings, the Belgian State had had to confront significant challenges in order to deal with the influx of applicants for international protection. Moreover, the Court could not criticise the Belgian authorities’ decision to focus the network’s reception capacity on the most vulnerable individuals. The Belgian authorities had deployed substantial efforts to contribute to the financing of associative schemes, create additional accommodation, recruit staff and shorten processing times for asylum applications. Those factors could not, however, dilute the protection owed to the applicants in the present case under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.
Third, as to the applicants’ own conduct, the Court could not discern any lack of diligence on their part that had contributed to a delay in the enforcement of the decisions concerned.
In view of the foregoing, while the Court was aware of the difficult situation the Belgian State had been facing, it considered that the time taken by the Belgian authorities to enforce the court decisions concerning the applicants and aimed at protecting human dignity could not be regarded as reasonable. Those decisions had not, moreover, been enforced in full, since the coercive fines imposed on the State had not been paid to date.
In addition, the Government had acknowledged before the Court that there had been a violation of Article 6 § 1 in respect of the applicants and had committed to pursuing all efforts to put an end to the systemic problem identified in the Camara v. Belgium judgment as quickly as possible.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 34:
For each of the applicants, the Court had issued interim measures indicating to the Belgian State that it should enforce the decision of the Employment Tribunal and provide them with accommodation and material support to meet their basic needs.
The interim measures had been applied through the provision of accommodation for the applicants between 21 and 261 days after those measures had been indicated by the Court.
The Court could understand that, confronted with the scale of the crisis stemming from the saturation of the asylum-seeker reception network, the Belgian authorities had not been in a position to comply with the interim measures immediately after they had been indicated by the Court. It could accept that some time might be needed to apply such a measure entailing a positive benefit, provided that all steps had been taken with the greatest care in order to comply as quickly as possible.
Nevertheless, regardless of the scale of the crisis, in the present case the Court did not find reasonable the time taken between the indication of the interim measures and their application by the authorities in view of the following considerations. The applicants’ conduct had in no way hindered or delayed that application. The authorities, on the other hand, had taken no immediate steps with regard to the applicants following the indication of the interim measures. Those measures had confirmed a final order that had previously been issued by the domestic courts.
Accordingly, since the Government had not shown that the authorities had taken all reasonable steps to comply with the interim measures as quickly as possible, the Court concluded that the Belgian authorities had failed to fulfil their obligations under Article 34 of the Convention with respect to the applicants.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 46:
The systemic problem identified in the Camara v. Belgium judgment had not been resolved. In particular, the Committee of Ministers had noted that, in many cases, the authorities did not have the capacity to provide applicants for international protection with the reception conditions to which they were legally entitled.
In such circumstances, the Court had to reaffirm its previous findings. While it was mindful of the difficulties with which the Belgian authorities had been faced, the practice of not complying with domestic legislation and not enforcing court decisions ordering such compliance was incompatible with the principle of the rule of law which underpinned the entire Convention system. The Court therefore emphasised once again that the respondent State had a duty to take appropriate measures to put an end to that practice, pursuant to its obligations under Article 46 of the Convention. In that connection, the Committee of Ministers had indicated that it would re-examine the situation in September 2026 as part of its supervisory duties.
Article 41: claim for pecuniary damage dismissed; EUR 5,070 to the first applicant, EUR 8,450 to the second applicant, EUR 12,350 to the third applicant and EUR 6,000 to the fourth applicant in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(See N.H. and Others v. France, 28820/13 et al., 2 July 2020, Legal Summary; Camara v. Belgium, 49255/22, 18 July 2023, Legal Summary)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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