Published on 21 March 2022

FOURTH SECTION

Application no. 36163/21 Janit BITAR against the Netherlands lodged on 12 July 2021 communicated on 4 March 2022

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application concerns family reunion between the applicant (born in 1992) and her brother (born in 1994), both Syrian nationals.

Together with their parents, they had fled to Lebanon from Syria because of the war in the latter country. The applicant’s brother had then travelled to the Netherlands where he was granted asylum. On 19 April 2018 the applicant ‑ 26 years old at the time ‑ and her parents submitted applications for residence permits for the purpose of family reunion with her brother in the Netherlands, based on Article 8 of the Convention. Although her parents’ application was granted, hers was rejected. The authorities did not qualify the applicant’s relationship with her brother as family life within the meaning of Article 8; they considered that the existence of “more than the normal emotional ties” had not been established and found no indications that the applicant was “exclusively dependent” on her brother. The applicant was left behind in a shelter in Lebanon.

Before the domestic courts the applicant – unsuccessfully – argued that there existed “additional elements of dependence” between her and her brother because she had never lived without, or independently from, her family. The applicant submitted that her brother was supporting her emotionally and financially from the Netherlands and that she was suffering from a range of psychological problems, which in the opinion of the experts consulted, namely a psychologist and a psychiatrist, were partly due to the separation from her brother and subsequently also from her parents, and to social isolation. The experts recommended that the applicant be allowed to join her parents and brother and that she continues to receive treatment.

The applicant complains under Article 8 of the Convention that the authorities failed to recognise family life within the meaning of that provision between her and her brother and that the rejection of her application for family reunion constitutes a violation of her right to respect for family life.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

Is there, given the specific circumstances of the case, “family life” within the meaning of Article 8 of the Convention between the applicant and her adult brother?

In particular, has the applicant demonstrated that there are “additional elements of dependence” (see Slivenko v. Latvia [GC], no. 48321/99 , § 97, ECHR 2003 ‑ X, and A.H. Khan v. the United Kingdom , no. 6222/10 , § 32, 20 December 2011) between the applicant and her brother?

When examining that question, did the competent authorities and the domestic courts take sufficiently into account all relevant elements?