Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 167
October 2013
Winterstein and Others v. France - 27013/07
Judgment 17.10.2013 [Section V]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for family life
Respect for home
Respect for private life
Eviction of French travellers from private land where they had been living for many years: violation
Facts – The applicants had been living on the land in question for between five and thirty years, and some of them had been born there. The plots of land were located in an area that had been designated ex post facto as a “protected natural area” under the land-use plan, in a part where camping and caravanning were permitted provided that the site was suitably equipped and the persons concerned had the requisite authorisation. In 2004 the tribunal de grande instance ruled that the applicants’ presence on the site was in breach of the land-use plan, and ordered them to vacate the land or face a fine for each day’s delay. That judgment was upheld by the court of appeal in 2005. The judgment has not been enforced to date, but many of the applicants left the site rather than risk paying the daily fine, which continues to apply to those who remain. The authorities also decided to carry out an urban and social study, following which four families were rehoused in social housing. No satisfactory solution has been found in respect of the others.
Law – Article 8: The applicants, who had lived for many years in the same locality, had had sufficiently close and continuing links with the caravans, huts and bungalows located on the land for these to be considered as their homes, irrespective of whether their presence on the land was lawful under the domestic legislation. The present case also pertained to the applicants’ right to respect for their private and family lives. Living in caravans was an integral part of travellers’ identity, even when they no longer led a nomadic existence, and measures affecting the stationing of their caravans had an impact on their ability to maintain their identity and to lead their private and family lives in accordance with that tradition.
The requirement for the applicants to remove their caravans and vehicles, as well as any buildings, from the land or risk payment of a daily fine constituted interference with their right to respect for their private and family lives and their homes, notwithstanding the fact that the 2005 judgment had not been enforced to date. This was especially so since the case concerned decisions ordering the eviction of a community of almost a hundred people, with inevitable repercussions on their way of life and their social and family ties. The interference had been in accordance with the law, accessible and foreseeable, and had pursued the legitimate aim of protecting the “rights of others” in the form of protection of the environment.
It was not disputed that the applicants had been living on the land in question for many years or had been born there, and that the municipal authorities had tolerated their presence over a lengthy period before seeking to put an end to the situation in 2004. In ordering the applicants’ eviction, the domestic courts had given overriding consideration to the fact that their presence on the land ran counter to the land-use plan, without in any way balancing this against the arguments advanced by the applicants. The authorities had not offered any explanation or argument as to the “necessity” of the eviction, although the land in question had already been classified as a protected natural area in the previous land-use plans, it was not communal land on which development was planned, and there were no third-party rights at stake. The applicants had therefore not had the benefit of a review of the proportionality of the interference in accordance with the requirements of Article 8 of the Convention.
In the particular circumstances of the case and bearing in mind the long-standing presence of the applicants, their families and the community they had formed, the principle of proportionality required that particular consideration be given to the consequences of their eviction and the risk that they would be made homeless. Numerous international and Council of Europe instruments stressed the need, in the event of forced eviction of Roma or travellers, to provide the persons concerned with alternative accommodation except in cases of force majeure, bearing in mind that they belonged to a vulnerable minority. This had been only partly achieved in the present case. While the consequences of eviction and the applicants’ vulnerability had not been taken into consideration by the authorities before commencing the eviction proceedings, or by the courts in the course of those proceedings, an urban and social study had been undertaken following the judgment of the court of appeal in order to determine the situation of each family and assess the options for rehousing them. Some families who had opted for social housing had been rehoused in 2008, that is to say, four years after the eviction ruling. To that extent, the authorities had given sufficient consideration to the needs of the families concerned. As to those applicants who had requested alternative accommodation on so-called family sites, that project had been abandoned by the municipal authorities, who had decided instead to designate the land in question as a site for itinerant travellers.
For their part, the applicants could not be said to have remained inactive. A number of them had applied for social housing under the Law on the justiciable right to housing, specifying that they wished to be housed on family sites. Their applications had been rejected by the Mediation Commission and by the administrative court; furthermore, those who had left the locality had attempted to find alternative accommodation which for the most part had proved precarious and unsatisfactory. Nor could they be criticised for not applying for or accepting social housing which, as the Court acknowledged, did not correspond to their way of life. Apart from the four families rehoused in social housing and two families who had moved to other parts of the country, the applicants were all in a highly precarious position. Accordingly, the authorities had not given sufficient consideration to the needs of those families who had applied to be rehoused on family sites.
The applicants had not had the benefit, in the context of the eviction proceedings, of a review of the proportionality of the interference in accordance with the requirements of Article 8. There had also been a violation of that Article in respect of those applicants who had applied to be rehoused on family sites, on account of the insufficient consideration of their needs.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: question reserved.
(See Yordanova and Others v. Bulgaria, 25446/06, 24 April 2012, Information Note 151)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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