Information Note on the Court’s case-law 223
November 2018
Popov and Others v. Russia - 44560/11
Judgment 27.11.2018 [Section III]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for home
Eviction of spouses after five years of unlawful residence in accommodation provided to their husbands by State employer: violation
Facts – The applicants were four families who resided in residential accommodation, in a dormitory building, which had been provided to the adult male applicants by their employer, the security service of the Ministry of Finance, in the 1990s. In 2001 the building had been transferred to the Federal Treasury. From 2002 to 2005, the adult female applicants moved in after marrying their husbands, while the minor applicants were born and started living in the dormitory with their parents between 2003 and 2009.
In 2010, following proceedings brought by the Treasury, a district court ordered the eviction of the adult female applicants, as no tenancy agreements had been concluded with their husbands, who were therefore not allowed to be joined by family members. The eviction order had not yet been enforced.
In 2012, following separate proceedings, the domestic courts held that, while they were not entitled to have social tenancy agreements, the adult male applicants and their minor children could not be evicted without being provided with alternative accommodation.
Law – Article 8: Given that the adult female applicants had lived in the residential accommodation in the dormitory building for at least five years, it was to be considered their “home” for the purposes of Article 8. Furthermore, even though the eviction had not yet been executed, the obligation to vacate the building had amounted to an interference with their right to respect for their home. The interference had had a legal basis and had pursued the legitimate aim of protecting the rights of other persons living in the building.
In respect of the Government’s claim that the interference had been necessary to protect the rights of other individuals who had obtained accommodation in the dormitory building lawfully, the Court observed that those individuals had not been sufficiently individualised to allow their personal circumstances to be balanced against those of the adult female applicants. The only established interests at stake had thus been those of the Treasury, which had wished to recover its property from the adult female applicants’ unlawful possession.
In deciding to evict the adult female applicants, the domestic courts had taken into account that they had been occupying the dormitory building premises unlawfully, that they had been registered as living elsewhere and retained the right to use other accommodation, and, lastly, that they could have decided themselves which parent their minor children would live with. While the fact that the adult female applicants had established their home in the dormitory building without legal grounds had been relevant for the assessment of the proportionality of their eviction, as was the availability of alternative accommodation, the domestic courts had not given sufficient weight to those applicants’ particular circumstances. The case material indicated that each family occupied a room, and that in the event of the adult female applicants being evicted, their husbands and children would continue to occupy the same space per family. Moreover, the Treasury had not claimed before the domestic courts that those rooms would be allocated to someone else, or that third parties could be moved into the space created by the eviction of the adult female applicants. Given the aforementioned, the national courts had failed to balance the competing rights and, as a consequence, to determine the proportionality of the interference with the adult female applicants’ right to respect for their home. The interference had therefore not been “necessary in a democratic society”.
Conclusion: violation in respect of the adult female applicants (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 7,500 to each adult female applicant in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(See also Connors v. the United Kingdom, 66746/01, 27 May 2004, Information Note 64; and McCann v. the United Kingdom, 19009/04, 13 May 2008, Information Note 108)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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