Information Note on the Court’s case-law 240
May 2020
Sudita Keita v. Hungary - 42321/15
Judgment 12.5.2020 [Section IV]
Article 8
Positive obligations
Article 8-1
Respect for private life
Protracted difficulties for stateless person to regularise legal position: violation
Facts – The applicant, a stateless person of Somali and Nigerian descent, arrived in Hungary in 2002. His attempts to regularise his status were unsuccessful. In 2015 the Constitutional Court removed the provision in the law on the admission and right of residence of third-country nationals (“the RRTN Act”) which required “lawful stay in the country” as a precondition for granting stateless status, holding that the requirement contravened public international law obligations ratified by Hungary.
The applicant was ultimately granted stateless status in October 2017. He complained about the protracted difficulties he had had in regularising his legal situation, with allegedly adverse repercussions on his access to healthcare and employment and his right to get married.
Law – Article 8: The principal question was whether the Hungarian authorities had provided an effective and accessible procedure or a combination of procedures enabling the applicant to have the issues of his further stay and status in Hungary determined with due regard to his private-life interests.
There was no doubt that the applicant enjoyed private life in Hungary and the Court accepted that the uncertainty of his legal status, lasting for about fifteen years, had had adverse repercussions on that private life. The applicant had lived in Hungary without any legal status while being deprived of basic entitlements to healthcare and employment. The Nigerian embassy in Budapest had refused to recognise his Nigerian citizenship in 2006, rendering the applicant de facto stateless from that point in time. The domestic authorities had not informed the applicant about the possibility of applying for stateless status at that time.
Up until the decision of the Constitutional Court removing the “lawful stay” requirement from the RRTN Act, it had been practically impossible for the applicant to be recognised as stateless as he did not meet that requirement. Thus, in reality, contrary to the principles flowing from the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, the applicant, a stateless individual, had been required to fulfil requirements which, by virtue of his status, he had been unable to fulfil. Following the decision of the Constitutional Court, it had taken the domestic courts more than two years to reach a final decision in his case, ultimately granting him stateless status.
In the particular circumstances of the case, the respondent State had not complied with its positive obligation to provide an effective and accessible procedure or a combination of procedures enabling the applicant to have the issue of his status in Hungary determined with due regard to his private-life interests under Article 8.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 8,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage; claim for pecuniary damage dismissed.
(See Hoti v. Croatia, 63311/14, 26 April 2018, Information Note 217, and contrast Abuhmaid v. Ukraine, 31183/13, 12 January 2017, Information Note 203)
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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