Slovenia told to compensate Yugoslav citizens European Court of Human Rights rules on damages for non-Slovenians whose residency rights were taken away when Slovenia broke away from Yugoslavia.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has ordered Slovenia to pay compensation to citizens of other republics of Yugoslavia who were stripped of their residency rights when Slovenia became independent two decades ago.

In a final, unanimous judgement issued yesterday (12 March), the court ordered Slovenia to pay between €29,400 and €72,770 to each of the six applicants in the case. Slovenia now has three months to pay the total of around €245,000 to the applicants.

The six, all of whom were citizens of what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, were removed from the Slovenian register of permanent residents early in 1992 after they had missed a deadline in December 1991 to apply for Slovenian citizenship. Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991.

In their application, the six said that the Slovenian authorities took their identity documents, which made it impossible for them to work or travel or to seek medical treatment. Some of them were evicted from their apartments and lost their personal belongings.

During the legal proceedings, all six had their residency right restored. At the same time, Slovenian courts issued around 30 final rulings on compensation claims, all of them negative.

In all, 25,671 Yugoslav citizens – known as the ‘erased’ – lost their residency permits in Slovenia.

Yesterday’s judgment follows another final ruling by the European Court of Human Rights issued in June 2012, which found that Slovenia had violated the right to respect for private or family life when it revoked the residency permit of the ‘erased’, and ordered the Slovenian government to launch a compensation scheme for all concerned. Slovenia failed to do so within the one-year deadline set by the court. It did so at the end of 2013, and the scheme is scheduled to take effect in June. It offers €50 per ‘erased’ per month during which they lived in Slovenia without status, while the Strasbourg court’s compensation amounts to €150 per person per month.

The court said that another 65 similar cases were currently pending, involving more than 1,000 applicants.

Gregor Virant, Slovenia’s interior minister, welcomed the ruling as a confirmation that the Slovenian compensation scheme was appropriate. Representatives of the ‘erased’, meanwhile, say that the scheme should be changed following the ruling to offer more generous compensation.

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