Deportation when justified on grounds of public interest is not incompatible with Article 8 of the ECHR.
JUDGMENT
Krasniqi v. Austria 25-04-2017 (no. 41697/12)
SUMMARY
Deportation on grounds of public interest. The applicant was a Kosovo national and lived in Austria for 14 years with his family and was sentenced several times for criminal offenses. In this case, the Court held that the public interest in the applicant’s deportation and crime prevention exceeded his personal interest in respect of the preservation of his private life and family ties in Austria. No infringement of Article 8.
PROVISION
Article 8
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, Agron Krasniqi, is a national of Kosovo who was born in 1974. The case concerned his expulsion from Austria to Kosovo, where he now lives. Mr Krasniqi moved to Austria when he was 19, returning to Kosovo in 1997, age 22, when his asylum claim was dismissed. He returned to Austria one year later and claimed asylum again. The claim was dismissed, but he and his family were granted subsidiary protection and a temporary residence permit. He lived and worked in Austria for the next 14 and half years with his wife, who is of Montenegrin origin, and their three children; he also has a fourth child from an extra-marital relationship with an Austrian citizen. His parents and siblings also all live in Austria, although his father continues to own land and three shops in Kosovo, which are run by relatives. Between 2003 and 2012 Mr Krasniqi was convicted on nine separate occasions of various crimes, including bodily harm, burglary, drugs offences and aggravated threat. As a result of his criminal record, he was issued in 2007 with a ban prohibiting his return to Austria for ten years. However, the ban remained without effect as long as he had subsidiary protection.
His subsidiary protection was thus withdrawn in 2010, the asylum authorities finding that the security situation in Kosovo had significantly improved, and his expulsion was declared admissible. The asylum courts subsequently confirmed this decision; they essentially concluded that the public interest in expelling Mr Krasniqi and in preventing crime outweighed his personal interest in maintaining his strong private and family ties in Austria. In 2011 the Constitutional Court refused to deal with the case and, following a period of pre-trial detention (in relation to one of his criminal convictions) and then detention pending expulsion, Mr Krasniqi was expelled to Kosovo in January 2013. Relying on Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights, Mr Krasniqi complained about the withdrawal of his subsidiary protection and his subsequent expulsion to Kosovo.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
No violation of Article 8
