European Court of Human Rights: review of the judgment of May 16, 2019 in the case of Tasev v. Northern Macedonia (application no. 9825/13)

The decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Tasev v. North Macedonia considered the complaint of Slavcho Tasev who asked that the authorities’ refusal to change his ethnicity in the electoral roll had violated his right to ethnic identity under Article 8 of the Convention (the right to respect for private life). The Court, referring to its position, in particular, in the case of Aksu v. Turkey [GC], once again underlined that ethnic identity is a detail pertaining to an individual’s identity that falls within the personal sphere protected by Article 8 of the Convention. Despite the fact that the Government acknowledged the interference with the applicant’s private life, in the present case the Court analyzed whether this interference was “prescribed by law”. The Court came to the conclusion that the legal basis for the refusal was not foreseeable for the applicant, which contradicts with the established earlier in Kurić and Others v. Slovenia [GC] standards of accessibility and foreseeability of the law applied by the authorities. Thus, the intervention was not “prescribed by law” in violation of Article 8 of the Convention.

Citation: (2019) Evropeyskiy Sud po pravam cheloveka: obzor postanovleniya ot 15 maya 2019 goda po delu Tasev protiv Severnoy Makedonii (zhaloba № 9825/13) [European Court of Human Rights: review of the judgment of May 15, 2019 in the case of Tasev v. Northern Macedonia (application no. 9825/13)]. Mezhdunarodnoe pravosudie, vol.9, no.2, pp.41–43. (In Russian).