Date of the ruling : October 1st 2015
Jurisdiction : European Court of Human Rights
The case concerned the authorities’ refusal to award the applicants family benefits for their children who had joined them in France without complying with the family reunification procedure. As the applicants had been unable to produce the medical certificates required by the Social Security Code and issued by the French Immigration and Integration Agency (OFII) in respect of each child following the family reunification procedure, they were refused family benefits. The Court found that the refusal to grant family allowances to the applicants had not been founded solely on their nationality or on any other criterion covered by Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights, but on the fact that they had failed to observe the rules on family reunification, which constituted a difference in treatment based on objective and reasonable grounds.
Results and key consequences of the case : The European Court of Human Rights considered that there had been no violation of Article 8 taken in conjunction with Article 14, and that the complaint was manifestly ill-founded and should be rejected. The ECHR therefore approve the denial of family benefits when the family reunification procedure is not respected.
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