SUDITA KEITA v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT
which were not in compliance with the relevant provisions of international
law, had prevented him from regularising his situation for a protracted
period of time.
(b) The Government
28. The Government disagreed. They submitted in particular that the
applicant’s situation had ultimately been resolved by virtue of the
Constitutional Court’s ruling.
29. In the Government’s view, even up until that moment in time, the
difficulties the applicant might have encountered had not been of the kind or
of a degree that would represent a disproportionate burden from the
perspective of Article 8 of the Convention. That Article could not, at any
rate, be interpreted as requiring a Contracting State to grant stateless status
to a person.
30. Furthermore, the Government submitted that the authorities had
applied the relevant law correctly at all stages of the various procedures and
that the applicant’s right to marry had not been hampered by the fact that he
had had no legal entitlement to remain in the country.
2. The Court’s assessment
(a) General principles
31. The general principles relevant to the present application have
recently been outlined in Hoti v. Croatia (no. 63311/14, §§ 119-123,
26 April 2018) as follows:
“119. At the outset, the Court reiterates that Article 8 protects, inter alia, the right
to establish and develop relationships with other human beings and the outside world
and can sometimes embrace aspects of an individual’s social identity. Thus, the
totality of social ties between a migrant and the community in which he or she lives
constitutes part of the concept of private life under Article 8 (see, mutatis mutandis,
Maslov v. Austria [GC], no. 1638/03, § 63, ECHR 2008, and Abuhmaid [v. Ukraine,
no. 31183/13, § 102, 12 January 2017]).
120. Nevertheless, according to the Court’s case-law, the Convention does not
guarantee the right of an alien to enter or to reside in a particular country and
Contracting States have the right, as a matter of well-established international law and
subject to their treaty obligations, including the Convention, to control the entry,
residence and expulsion of aliens (see, amongst many other authorities, Chahal
v. the United Kingdom, 15 November 1996, § 73, Reports of Judgments and Decisons
1996‑V; Üner [v. the Netherlands [GC], no. 46410/99, § 54, ECHR 2006‑XII];
Slivenko [v. Latvia [GC], no. 48321/99, § 115, ECHR 2003-X]; Kurić and Others
[v. Slovenia [GC], no. 26828/06, § 355, ECHR 2012 (extracts)], and Abuhmaid, cited
above, § 101).
121. Moreover, neither Article 8 nor any other provision of the Convention can be
construed as guaranteeing, as such, the right to the granting of a particular type of
residence permit, provided that a solution offered by the authorities allows the
individual concerned to exercise without obstacles his or her right to respect for
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