Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2019 1(1) Croatian citizenship under the condition of renouncing his Albanian citizenship. 16 According to the statement of the applicant, when he attempted to renounce his Albanian citizenship, the Albanian authorities orally informed him that he was not one of their citizens. 17 The second time his application for citizenship was rejected on the basis that he did not fulfil the residence requirement. Mr Hoti lodged an appeal with the High Administrative Court of the Republic of Croatia (‘Administrative Court’) which decided against him. 18 In 2001, Mr Hoti applied for a permanent residence permit. His application was dismissed in 2003, and he challenged the decision before the Administrative Court and subsequently before the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia, both times unsuccessfully. 19 The decision refusing the permit, interestingly, specified that the Croatian authorities considered Mr Hoti to be a national of Serbia and Montenegro. 20 Since 2011, Mr Hoti has been granted temporary residence on humanitarian grounds several times. Those decisions considered him to be a national of Kosovo. In 2014, he attempted to extend this residence permit, but he failed due to lack of a valid travel document. 21 After lodging a complaint with the ECtHR that he had not had an effective possibility to regularise his residence status in Croatia, Mr Hoti received a renewed residence permit on humanitarian grounds. 22 Nevertheless, the ECtHR considered his complaint. III ANALYSIS OF THE JUDGMENT A Main Arguments The ECtHR found a violation of art 8 of the ECHR relying upon several considerations, among which were the context of state succession, the applicant’s statelessness, his lack of any serious criminal record and the fact that Croatia consistently tolerated his stay and never initiated removal proceedings. The ECtHR criticised the government for denying Mr Hoti his permanent residence permit based on formalistic considerations and without regard to his specific personal circumstances, and found that Croatia failed to comply with its positive obligation to provide an effective and accessible procedure or a combination of procedures enabling the applicant to have the issues of his further stay and status in Croatia determined with due regard to his private-life interests under Article 8 of the Convention. 23 The ECtHR kept emphasising throughout the judgment the peculiar situation of Mr Hoti as a ‘stateless migrant’, whose case needs to be ‘understood in the context of the complex circumstances of the dissolution of the former SFRY’. 24 The ECtHR dismissed the Government’s preliminary objection that by granting the applicant a temporary residence permit on humanitarian grounds the case ‘has 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 ibid [25]. ibid [38]. ibid [39]–[40]. ibid [41], [44]. ibid [93]. ibid [45]–[47]. ibid [55]. ibid [141]. ibid [117]. 186