Abstract
The article analyses the judgment of <em>Hoti v. Croatia</em> of the European Court of Human Rights which has to be seen as a landmark case for the rights of stateless persons in Europe. Recognizing the particular vulnerability of stateless persons, the Court finds a violation of the right to private life in Croatia’s failure to provide for an effective and accessible regularisation mechanism. Moreover, as this contribution argues, the <em>Hoti</em> case can be seen as a consolidation of the ECtHR’s social identity approach to protect the social ties of migrants in respect of the right to remain, the right to a legal status and the right to citizenship in the state of residence.
Highlights
On 26 April 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its judgment in the case of Hoti v
Having the particular background of the dissolution of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in mind, it examines how statelessness affects Mr Hoti’s access to the rights guaranteed by the Convention and how the lack of documentation and of access to official registers impedes every attempt to regularise his legal status as a long-time resident in Croatia and fails to protect his right to private life
3 Particular Vulnerability of Stateless Persons and a Right to Regularisation: The Judgment. In his complaint to the ECtHR, Mr Hoti argued that the ‘insecurity of his residence status in Croatia due to the fact that he had not had an effective possibility to regularise his residence status’ violated the right to private life protected by Article 8 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).[16]
Summary
On 26 April 2018, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its judgment in the case of Hoti v. Even though Mr Hoti’s repeated attempts to regularise his legal status in Croatia since 1987 were futile, he stayed in Croatia, sometimes irregularly informally tolerated by the authorities, sometimes with a temporary residence permit on humanitarian grounds valid for a couple of months.[14] When he tried to prolong this temporary residence permit for the fourth time in 2014 his request was denied as he failed to provide a valid travel document His appeal against this decision was still pending when Mr Hoti lodged his complaint with the ECtHR in 2014. After the case was communicated to the Croatian government, the applicant was again granted a temporary residence permit on humanitarian grounds.[15]
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