Paketova and Others v Bulgaria (third-party intervention, pending)

13 December 2019

Facts

Roma living in a Romani neighbourhood of Voyvodinovo in Bulgaria were forced to leave their homes following a wave of protests on 6-7 January 2019. The protests followed accusations that crime had taken place in the village and that Roma were responsible. On 16 January 2019, the mayor made a series of demolition orders, ordering all of the homes in the Romani neighbourhood to be destroyed. People targeted by those orders brought their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The ERRC’s Third-Party Intervention

The ERRC was not involved in the case before it reached the European Court. When the European Court made the case public, we asked if we could make submissions as a “third-party intervener”. This means that we can send written comments to the Court designed to help the Court with its ruling. The European Court accepted and on 12 November 2019 we submitted our third-party intervention. 

We made three points. 

• First, we said the time had come for the European Court of Human Rights to use the term “antigypsyism” in its case law. European Union and Council of Europe bodies regularly use the word. It is the word that Roma use to describe situations such as collective punishment in the form of a mass forced eviction following accusations that someone in their neighbourhood has committed a crime. 
• Second, we argued that antigypsyism is rife in Bulgaria and is closely linked to residential segregation, degraded living conditions, and forced evictions. We pointed to examples of hate speech by political figures who called for Romani neighbourhoods to be destroyed. 
• Our last point had to do with what is called “exhaustion of domestic remedies”. Normally people should bring their case to national courts before going to the European Court of Human Rights. But in this case, the people went straight to the European Court without first going to the national courts in Bulgaria. We argued that that was ok: the Court should accept Romani people’s complaints about discriminatory no-notice or short-notice evictions, regardless of whether those people took domestic proceedings, because such evictions leave Roma with no effective remedies before the national authorities.

The Court’s statement of facts in the case can be found (in French) here.

The ERRC’s third-party intervention can be found here.