Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 102
November 2007
Omwenyeke v. Germany - 44294/04
Decision 20.11.2007 [Section V]
Article 2 of Protocol No. 4
Article 2 para. 1 of Protocol No. 4
Freedom to choose residence
Geographical restrictions on the residence of an asylum-seeker pending a final decision on his request: inadmissible
The applicant, a Nigerian national, entered Germany in 1998 and requested asylum. He was issued a provisional residence permit and directed to reside and remain within the city of Wolfsburg pending the decision on his asylum request. However, the applicant left Wolfsburg on several occasions without permission by the competent authorities and was subsequently convicted and fined for disregarding the territorial restrictions on his residence. In 2001, following his marriage to a German national, the applicant was granted a residence permit and was no longer subject to restrictions of movement.
Inadmissible: Article 2 of Protocol No. 4 secures freedom of movement only to persons “lawfully within a territory of the State”. As the former European Commission of Human Rights had stated in its case-law, pending proceedings to determine whether or not they were entitled to a residence permit under domestic law, foreigners provisionally admitted to a certain district of the territory of a State could only be regarded as “lawfully” in the territory as long as they complied with the conditions to which their admission and stay were subjected. Since the applicant had repeatedly left the district he had been ordered to remain in without the necessary permission from the authorities, he had not been “lawfully” within the territory of Germany at that moment and could therefore not rely on the right to liberty of movement under Article 2 of Protocol No. 4: manifestly ill-founded.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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