Published on 15 April 2024
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 57184/22
N.P. and V.P.
against Bulgaria
lodged on 2 December 2022
communicated on 28 March 2024
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the alleged failure of the authorities to comply with their positive obligations to enable the effective exercise of family ties between the applicants, a father (the first applicant) and his daughter (the second applicant), between early 2020 and June 2023. The child had just turned two years old when the father lost almost all contact with her in 2020, despite holding joint custody over the child with her mother at the time.
Relying on Article 8 alone and in conjunction with Article 13 of the Convention, the applicants complain of a breach of their right to family life as a result of the impossibility to have contact with each other for over three years. Starting in 2020, the first applicant addressed numerous requests for assistance to social services, the police and the prosecution, as well as repeatedly asked the Bulgarian courts to pronounce on interim measures with a view to having contact with his child. He claims that the different authorities’ actions were ineffective in the face of the mother’s reluctance to cooperate.
The applicant was only reunited with his daughter in June 2023. The applicants have been living together since June 2023, having seen each other only once during the previous three years. In August 2023 the Plovdiv District Court, before which divorce and custody proceedings brought by the first applicant in February 2020 were pending, ruled on his request for interim measures. The court granted him sole custody over the child, pending the end of the main proceedings; it also awarded contact rights to the mother, for the duration of three hours twice a month, in institutional settings and in the presence of a social worker.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has there been a violation of the applicants’ right to respect for their family life within the meaning of Article 8 of the Convention on account of the alleged failure on the part of the competent Bulgarian authorities during the period between early 2020 and 12 June 2023 to reunite the applicants in a timely manner, including by determining contact rights between them pending the divorce and custody proceedings (see, for example, Iglesias Gil and A.U.I. v. Spain, no. 56673/00, § 49, ECHR 2003-V; Eberhard and M. v. Slovenia, nos. 8673/05 and 9733/05, § 127, 1 December 2009, and Diamante and Pelliccioni v. San Marino, no. 32250/08, § 177, 27 September 2011)?
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?