Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 145

October 2011

Genovese v. Malta - 53124/09

Judgment 11.10.2011 [Section IV]

Article 14

Discrimination

Denial of citizenship to a child born out of wedlock: violation

Facts – The applicant was born out of wedlock of a British mother and a Maltese father. After the latter’s paternity had been established judicially, the applicant’s mother filed a request for her son to be granted Maltese citizenship. Her application was rejected on the basis that Maltese citizenship could not be granted to an illegitimate child whose mother was not Maltese.

Law – Article 14 in conjunction with Article 8

(a) Applicability – Denial of citizenship might raise an issue under Article 8 because of its impact on an individual’s private life, which concept was wide enough to embrace aspects of a person’s social identity. Even though the right to citizenship was not as such a Convention right and its denial in the applicant’s case did not give a rise to a violation of Article 8, the Court considered that its impact on the applicant’s social identity was such as to bring it within the general scope and ambit of that provision*.

(b) Merits – Recalling its jurisprudence in the cases of Inze v. Austria ** and Marckx v. Belgium ***, as well as the 1975 European Convention on the Legal Status of Children Born out of Wedlock – to date not ratified by Malta – the Court reiterated that very weighty reasons would have had to be advanced to justify an arbitrary difference in treatment on the ground of birth.

The applicant was in an analogous situation to other children with a father of Maltese nationality and a mother of foreign nationality. The only distinguishing factor, which had rendered him ineligible to acquire citizenship, was the fact that he had been born out of wedlock. The Court was not convinced by the Government’s argument that children born in wedlock had a link with their parents resulting from their parents’ marriage, which did not exist in cases of children born out of wedlock. It was precisely a distinction in treatment based on such a link which Article 14 prohibited, unless it was otherwise objectively justified.

Furthermore, the Court could not accept the argument that, while the mother was always certain, a father was not. In the applicant’s case, his father was known and was registered in his birth certificate, yet the distinction arising from the Citizenship Act had persisted.

Accordingly, no reasonable or objective grounds had been given to justify that difference in treatment.

Conclusion : violation (six votes to one).

Article 41: No claim made in respect of damage.

* See also Karassev v. Finland (dec.), no. 31414/96, 12 January 1999, Information Note no. 2; and Slivenko v. Latvia (dec.) [GC], no. 48321/99, 23 January 2002.

** Inze v. Austria , no. 8695/79, 28 October 1987.

*** Marckx v. Belgium , no. 6833/74, 13 June 1979.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes