Cazacliu and others v Romania (2017)

24 November 2017

The case concerned the forced eviction of Romani people from a building in which they had been living in Tulcea, Romania, after their homes burned in 1999. The eviction took place in 2006, amid racially charged statements by the mayor. The applicants were reduced to living in very poor conditions near a waste dump.

Some of the applicants, with our support, also took a case in the domestic courts in Romania. The domestic courts found that the eviction violated their human rights and awarded them approximately €450 each.

Usually, people can only go to the European Court of Human Rights after they have been through the national courts. This is called “exhausting domestic remedies”. The argument before the European Court was that the applicants did not need to go through the domestic courts first, because Romanian law did not provide adequate remedies against this kind of eviction.

The European Court disagreed. It decided that the applicants who had brought a domestic case had received sufficient and appropriate redress. Their complaints were dismissed as they were no longer “victims” of a violation of the Convention. The European Court found that those applicants who did not bring a case in the domestic courts should have done so. Their complaints were dismissed for failure to exhaust domestic remedies.

The Court’s decision can be found here.