Ciubotaru v. Moldova, No. 27138/04, ECtHR (Fourth Section), 27 April 2010

Inability of a Moldovan citizen to change his ethnic affiliation in official registers.

Art. 8 ECHR

1. The fact that Member States require objective evidence when registering an individual's ethnic identity does not in itself constitute a violation of Article 8 ECHR. When such a claim is based only on purely subjective grounds and not objectively provable, the state authorities could also refuse to register the membership. However, the applicant's claim had been based on more than the subjective perception of his ethnicity; he had been able to provide objectively verifiable links to the Romanian ethnic group such as language, name, cultural affinities and others.

2. Considering the circumstances of the case as a whole, it cannot be said that the procedure in place to allow the applicant to change his registered ethnicity is in conformity with Moldova's positive obligations to safeguard the applicant's right to respect for his private life. For the Court, the State's failure consists in the impossibility for the applicant to have his claim to belong to a certain ethnic group examined in the light of the objectively verifiable evidence adduced in support of that claim. For this reason, the State authorities did not comply with their positive obligation to guarantee the applicant effective respect for his private life. There has therefore been a violation of Article 8 ECHR.
(The applicant, applying to the local registry office, requested that the entry concerning his ethnicity be changed from Moldovan to Romanian. In response, he was informed that this was impossible, as neither of his parents had been registered as Romanian on their birth or marriage certificates. The applicant then initiated proceedings against the State, but his claim was rejected on the grounds that he had not proved that his parents were of Romanian ethnic origin).