Guide on Article 8 of the Convention – Right to respect for private and family life
the parent-child relationship (S.H. v. Italy, § 58). A violation was found where a mother was denied contact rights in respect of her child in foster care because of abduction risk by the father. As the Court pointed out, the risk of abduction of the applicant’s child by her father (and hence the issue of his protection) should not prevail over sufficiently addressing the mother’s contact rights with her child (Jansen v. Norway, §§ 103-104). The Court also found a violation of Article 8 where the authorities did not re-establish contact between a child and her father following his acquittal of charges of domestic violence and the return of two older children to his care. The Court did not find convincing the reasons relied on by the authorities and domestic courts to justify the child’s placement in preadoption care (Haddad v. Spain, §§ 57-74). 377. Article 8 demands that decisions of courts aimed in principle at facilitating visits between parents and their children, so that they can reestablish relations with a view to reunification of the family, must be implemented in an effective and coherent manner. No logical purpose would be served in deciding that visits may take place if the manner in which the decision is implemented means that de facto the child is irreversibly separated from its natural parent. Accordingly, authorities failed to strike a fair balance between the interests of an applicant and her children under Article 8 as a result of the absence of any time-limit on a care order and the negative conduct and attitudes of those at the care centre which drove the first applicant’s children towards an irreversible separation from their mother (Scozzari and Giunta v. Italy [GC], §§ 181 and 215). 378. An emergency care order placing an applicant’s child in public care and the authorities’ failure to take sufficient steps towards a possible reunification of the applicants’ family regardless of any evidence of a positive improvement in the applicants’ situation was also a violation of the right to family life, but subsequent normal care orders and access restrictions were not (K. and T. v. Finland [GC], §§ 170, 174, 179 and 194). 379. In Blyudik v. Russia, the Court held that the placement of the applicant’s daughter in a closed educational facility 2,500km from his home was unlawful in the absence of any grounds under domestic law for such placement.
4. Other family relationships a. As between siblings, grandparents 380. Family life can also exist between siblings (Moustaquim v. Belgium, § 36; Mustafa and Armağan Akın v. Turkey, § 19) and aunts/uncles and nieces/nephews (Boyle v. the United Kingdom, §§ 41-47). However, the traditional approach is that close relationships short of family life generally fall within the scope of private life (Znamenskaya v. Russia, § 27 and the references cited therein). 381. The Court has recognised the relationship between adults and their parents and siblings as constituting family life protected under Article 8 even where the adult did not live with his parents or siblings (Boughanemi v. France, § 35) and the adult had formed a separate household and family (Moustaquim v. Belgium, §§ 35 and 45-46; El Boujaïdi v. France, § 33). 382. The Court has stated that family life includes at least the ties between near relatives, for instance those between grandparents and grandchildren, since such relatives may play a considerable part in family life (Marckx v. Belgium, § 45; Bronda v. Italy, § 51; T.S. and J.J. v. Norway (dec.), § 23). The right to respect for family life of grandparents in relation to their grandchildren primarily entails the right to maintain a normal grandparent-grandchild relationship through contact between them (Kruškić v. Croatia (dec.), § 111; Mitovi v. the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, § 58). However, the Court considers that contact between grandparents and grandchildren normally take place with the agreement of the person who has parental responsibility, which means that access of a grandparent to his or her grandchild is normally at the discretion of the child’s parents (Kruškić v. Croatia (dec.), § 112). Where a grandmother took care of her grandchild since her birth, and behaved in all respects like her mother, the Court has accepted that the relationship between the ap-
European Court of Human Rights
88/161
Last update: 31.08.2021
