Last Updated on December 29, 2020 by LawEuro
Information Note on the Court’s case-law 246
December 2020
Usmanov v. Russia – 43936/18
Judgment 22.12.2020 [Section III]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for private life
Disproportionate and arbitrary annulment of citizenship for omitting information about siblings when applying ten years earlier:violation
Facts – The applicant, who was born in Tajikistan, settled in Russia with his wife and children and obtained Russian citizenship. Ten years later, after discovering that the applicant had omitted information about his siblings when applying for citizenship, the authorities annulled his citizenship and passports (an “internal” and “travel” passport), leaving him without identity documents. They also imposed an entry ban, preventing him from entering Russia, and administratively removed him from the territory. The applicant appealed unsuccessfully.
Law – Article 8:
In determining whether the annulment of the applicant’s citizenship constituted an interference with his rights under Article 8, the Court noted the existence of various approaches to the examination of the issue and followed the consequence-based approach (Denisov v. Ukraine [GC]). It examined (i) what the consequences of the impugned measure had been for the applicant and then (ii) whether the measure in question had been arbitrary.
(i) Consequences for the applicant
The decision to annul the applicant’s Russian citizenship had deprived him of any legal status in Russia. He had been left without any valid identity documents. As found in the Court’s earlier case-law, Russian citizens had to prove their identity unusually often in their everyday life, even when performing such mundane tasks as exchanging currency or buying train tickets, and the internal passport was also required for more crucial needs, such as finding employment or receiving medical care. Failure to possess a valid identity document was also punishable by a fine. Furthermore, the annulment of the applicant’s citizenship had been a precondition for the imposition of the entry ban on him and the decision to remove him from Russian territory. The annulment therefore had amounted to an interference with his Article 8 rights.
(ii) Whether the measure was arbitrary
The revocation or annulment of citizenship as such was not incompatible with the Convention. To assess whether Article 8 had been breached in the present case, the Court had to examine the lawfulness of the impugned measure, accompanying procedural guarantees and the manner in which the domestic authorities had acted.
The annulment had its basis in provisions of domestic law. However the Court was not satisfied by the clarity of these provisions, nor by the procedural safeguards of the domestic law in force at the material time.
To meet the requirements of the Convention, a law should be formulated in clear terms. If a person’s citizenship might be annulled or revoked for submitting false information or concealing information by that person, the law should specify the nature of that information. While conferring on the migration authorities the right to annul Russian citizenship, under the relevant domestic law, the authorities had not been required to give a reasoned decision specifying the factual grounds on which it had been taken, like the surrounding circumstances, such as the nature of the missing information, the reason for not submitting it to the authorities, the time elapsed since obtaining citizenship, the strength of the ties which the person concerned had with a country, his or her family situation or other important factors. In particular, they had not been required to explain why the failure by the applicant to indicate the full number of his siblings had been relevant for obtaining Russian citizenship. It had not been explained whether the migration authorities could have refused to grant the applicant Russian citizenship if the facts about his siblings had been known by them. The migration authorities and domestic courts had dismissed the applicant’s argument that the missing information had not been important for obtaining Russian citizenship as irrelevant.
According to the Government, after it had been established that the information submitted by the applicant had been incomplete, the authorities had had no other choice but to annul his citizenship, irrespective of other important factors. It had also not been shown that the national courts had to consider the aforementioned factors in proceedings. In the applicant’s case, the District Court had considered that the argument about his strong ties with Russia had been irrelevant.
It followed that the legal framework in force at the material time had fostered an excessively formalistic approach to the annulment of Russian citizenship and had failed to give the individual adequate protection against arbitrary interference. The subsequent improvement of the applicable legislation could not change that conclusion, because the amendments had had no effect on the applicant’s situation.
(iii) Overall
The Government had not demonstrated why the applicant’s failure to submit information about some of his siblings had been of such gravity as to justify the deprivation of Russian citizenship several years after the applicant had obtained it. In the absence of a balancing exercise which the domestic authorities had been expected to perform, the impugned measure was grossly disproportionate to the applicant’s omission.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
The Court also held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 8 on account of the decision to expel the applicant from Russian territory.
Article 41: EUR 162 in respect of pecuniary damage and EUR 10,00 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(See also Denisov v. Ukraine [GC], 76639/11, 25 September 2018, Information Note 221)
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