Indicator history

Until 2011 the European Court of Human Rights did not find a violation of Article 14 in any of the cases against Slovenia.

In 1992 the Slovenian Ministry of Interior deprived 25.671 individuals of their permanent residence status. This was a group that consisted of nationals of former Yugoslavia who were permanently residing in Slovenia but did not obtain Slovenia nationality after the country declared its independence. The group later became known as “the erased people”. The Slovenian Constitutional Court found with two rulings adopted in a constitutional review procedure that this status deprivation had no legal basis and that the Aliens Act which the Ministry of Interior invoked as a legal basis was in fact unconstitutional due to the fact that it contained no provisions on the regulation of legal status of this group of people. In spite of the Constitutional Court decisions which contained instructions on how to regulate the issue and regularize the legal status of affected people, the authorities failed to do adopt comprehensive legislation that would enable regularization of all erased people. On 4 July 2006 eleven erased people who were unable to regularize their legal status lodged a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights.

On 13 July 2010 ECHR issued a chamber judgment finding Slovenia responsible for violation of Article 8 (the right to protection of private and family life) and Article 13 (the right to effective remedy). The chamber found that by failing to fully implement the Constitutional Court decisions Slovenia also failed to provide effective domestic remedies which would enable the erased people to regularize their legal status, by which it also interfered with their right to protection of private and family life. The chamber however did not find violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) and Article 1 of Protocol 1 (property rights). Also, it only found violation with regard to eight applicants, while the remaining two were considered to have lost their victim status as they received a permanent residence permit in the course of the procedure (the eleventh applicant died). The case was appealed by both the Slovenian government and the applicants. On 26 June 2012 the Grand Chamber again found in favour of the applicants, convicting Republic of Slovenia not only for violation of Article 8 and 13, but also Article 14 – prohibition of discrimination. Namely, the Grand Chamber found that while the Aliens Act did not include provisions on status regularization for nationals of former Yugoslavia who resided permanently in Slovenia but did not obtain Slovenian nationality after the independence, but it did include provisions on regularization of legal status for those people who were legally residing in Slovenia as foreigners (from other non-Yugoslav countries) when the country was still part of Yugoslavia. While the latter did not have to do anything to retain their legal status, the former group was left without any kind of status. It decided that this constituted discrimination between the two groups based on ethnic grounds. The Grand Chamber recalled that the same finding has already been established by the Slovenian Constitutional Court and stated that it saw no reason to depart from this finding. The Grand Chamber found violation of convention grounds for six applicants (who in the meantime applied for and received permanent residence permits), while two who have not yet applied for their permanent residence permit were deemed to have lost their victim status as well. The six applicants were also awarded compensation in amount of 20.000 EUR for non-pecuniary damages, while the court reserved a decision on pecuniary damages for a later stage. The judgment is also a pilot judgment by nature as the Grand Chamber ordered the state to adopt an ad hoc domestic compensation scheme for the erased persons within one year since the delivery of the judgment.

Source:

ECHR, Kurić and others v. Slovenia, application no. 26828/06, available at http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/fra-press/pages/search.aspx?i=001-111634#{"itemid":["001-111634"]}