Published on 12 February 2024

FIFTH SECTION

Application no. 37406/21 Roman Petrovych KHAVRYUCHENKO against Ukraine lodged on 19 September 2021 communicated on 22 January 2024

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The case concerns the allegedly excessive length of the proceedings which the applicant instituted at the Kyevo-Svyatoshynskyy District Court (the first ‑ instance court) in January 2021 asking it to set out contact arrangements with his child born in 2015, who had been living with his mother separately from the applicant since January 2020, and the domestic courts’ refusal to establish as an interim measure a provisional contact schedule with the applicant’s child which he requested in his applications of 27 January, 9 August and 21 December 2021 while the proceedings were ongoing. In his interim-order applications, the applicant mainly argued that the child’s mother had obstructed his contact with the child since January 2020. By the decisions of 1 February, 17 March, 9 August and 22 December 2021, respectively, the first-instance court and the Kyiv Regional Court of Appeal (the appellate court) refused to set out the provisional contact arrangements on the grounds that the requested measure overlapped with the issues under consideration in the proceedings on the merits and that the applicant hadn’t shown the necessity of those measures to enforce a judgment in that case. On 21 September 2021 the case was decided on the merits by the first-instance court which set out specific contact arrangements between the applicant and his child. On 9 February 2022 the appellate court upheld that judgment and it became final and enforceable. The applicant mainly alleges a violation of Articles 6 and 8 of the Convention.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Was the length of the proceedings concerning the applicant’s contact arrangements with his child in breach of the “reasonable time” requirement under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention (see Laino v. Italy [GC], no. 33158/96, §§ 18-22, ECHR 1999 ‑ I; Milovanović v. Serbia , no. 56065/10, §§ 86-90, 8 October 2019; more recently, Ponomarenko v. Ukraine [Committee] , no. 17030/20, §§ 7-12, 22 September 2022; and Tryetyak v. Ukraine [Committee] , no. 10919/20, §§ 10-18, 22 September 2022)?

2. Has there been a violation of the applicant’s right to respect for his private and/or family life under Article 8 of the Convention on account of the domestic courts’ dismissal of his applications for an interim order setting out provisional contact arrangements in the framework of the proceedings referred to above (see Cristian Cătălin Ungureanu v. Romania , no. 6221/14, §§ 28-35, 4 September 2018)?