Mile Novaković v. Croatia, No. 73544/14, ECtHR (First Section), 17 December 2020

Unjustified dismissal of an ethnic Serbian teacher for not using the standard Croatian language in class with students, due to his advanced age which would prevent him from adapting the teaching language to the needs of the workplace.

Art. 8 ECHR
Art. 14 ECHR
Art. 1 Prot. 12 ECHR

1. The concept of 'private life' is a broad term which cannot be exhaustively defined. It can therefore encompass multiple aspects of a person's physical and social identity. Therefore, even disputes concerning work are not per se excluded from the scope of 'private life' within the meaning of Article 8 of the Convention. In the present case, the language used by the applicant was necessarily part of his ethnic identity, which is an essential aspect of an individual's private life. Moreover, the applicant's age was also an integral part of the person's physical identity. For this reason, Article 8 ECHR is applicable to the present case.

2. When relying on reasons such as an employee's age or inability to retrain, in order to avoid any appearance of arbitrariness, the employer and the competent national authorities had to provide adequate and convincing reasons for any such conclusion. However, the national authorities had not done so. Given the undeniable proximity of the two languages concerned (Croatian and Serbian), and the fact that the applicant had lived and worked in Croatia for most of his professional life, as well as having been born there, it was difficult to understand why the option of providing him with additional training in the standard Croatian language had not been explored further. Bearing in mind in particular the specific post-war context of the Eastern Slavonia region at the material time, the above appears to be sufficient to conclude that the applicant's dismissal from his job had not corresponded to an urgent social need, nor had it been proportionate to the aim pursued by the Croatian authorities of ensuring education in the Croatian language.
(The applicant, a Croatian of Serbian ethnicity and resident in the Slavonia region, was dismissed from the school where he had been teaching for twenty-nine years for not using the standard Croatian language correctly, but for including in it words directly used from the Serbian language rather than the Croatian language. Moreover, in respect of the dismissal, the Croatian Ministry had not provided for any activities to make up for the applicant's shortcomings because of his approaching retirement age).