On 17 May 2018, in a Chamber judgment handed down in the case of Ljatifi v. “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (application no. 19017/16), concerning a complaint brought by a Serbian national, who had been living in “the former Republic of Macedonia” from the age of eight, that she had been ordered to leave the country because she was a risk to national security and that she was thus under an imminent threat of forcible expulsion at any time, the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 7 (procedural safeguards relating to expulsion of aliens) to the European Convention on Human Rights. The domestic courts had failed to subject the executive’s assertion that the applicant posed a risk to national security to any meaningful scrutiny. In particular, they had based their decision on a classified document which had never been available either to them or to the applicant. Even though the Government had provided a redacted version of the document in the proceedings before the Court, it was not sufficient to prove that the applicant had been a risk to national security.

On 24 May 2018, the European Court of Human Rights handed down a Chamber judgment in the case of N.T.P. and Others v. France (application no. 68862/13), concerning the accommodation arrangements for a family – comprising a mother and her three young children – while they were waiting to submit their asylum application. The Court held that there had been no violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights; the applicants had been provided with night-time accommodation in a hostel financed from public funds and two of the children had attended nursery school. In addition, they had also received publicly-funded medical care and had been assisted by non-governmental organisations. The Court therefore held that the applicants had been able to attend to their most basic needs and that the French authorities had not been indifferent to their fate. The level of severity required for their situation to fall within Article 3 had not been reached.