GHOUMID AND OTHERS v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 11. In April 2015 the Minister of the Interior sent a letter to the applicants informing them that, in view of the judgment of 11 July 2007 convicting them of an offence constituting an act of terrorism, he had decided to initiate against them the procedure for deprivation of nationality provided for in Articles 25 and 25-1 of the Civil Code (see paragraph 19 below). Referring to Article 61 of Decree no. 93-1362 of 30 December 1993 on declarations of nationality and decisions on naturalisation, on redintegration, and on the loss, deprivation and withdrawal of French nationality (see paragraph 21 below), he invited the applicants to submit their observations within one month. The Minister specified that at the end of this period the Conseil d’État would be asked to give its opinion on the proposed deprivation of nationality, adding that this measure could be ordered only with its assent. 12. After receiving the assent of the Conseil d’État on 1 September 2015 (not produced for the file), the Prime Minister, by five orders of 7 October 2015, deprived the applicants of their French nationality. The orders were based on Article 25 of the Civil Code and Article 25-1 of the same Code as amended by Law no. 2006-64 of 23 January 2006 (see paragraph 19 below), and referred to the applicants’ criminal convictions. 13. The applicants made urgent applications to the Conseil d’État seeking the suspension of the orders of 7 October 2015 together with actions for judicial review. 14. The urgent applications were rejected by five similar decisions of 20 November 2015. 15. In the context of the judicial review procedure, the public rapporteur emphasised the following points in his opinion addressed to that court: “... I am of the opinion ... that it is necessary for the court ... to bring its case-law up to date in order to recognise that, in this type of dispute, Article 8 of the [Convention] can be relied upon. As your case-law stands, you have consistently held that Article 8 of the Convention ... cannot be invoked in nationality cases. ... This is also the approach of the Constitutional Council, which, again in its decision [no. 2014-439 QPC of 23 January 2015], dismissed as invalid the complaint that the right to private life of individuals deprived of their nationality had been breached. In a judgment of 11 October 2011, Genovese v. Malta, no. 53124/09, the Court ..., however, further developed its case-law by its disapproval of the Maltese legislation which drew a distinction, for the granting of Maltese nationality by descent, depending on whether a child had been born in or out of wedlock, considering that in that case such discrimination ... undermined the applicant’s social identity, which was itself protected by Article 8 of the Convention in respect of private life. It relied only on the head of private life, being a component of Article 8, as you know, being distinguishable from family life, which is not mentioned in this case-law. It reiterated this approach in its Mennesson and Labassée judgments (26 June 2014, Mennesson v. France, application no. 65192/11, and Labassée v. France, application no. 65941/11), concerning the status of children born of surrogacy arrangements abroad, and you yourselves entered into this line of reasoning on the question whether a certificate of 3