Belgium was condemned on Tuesday by the European Court of Human Rights for the arrest, in 2015 at her home, of a rejected asylum seeker who had been the subject of an order to leave the territory.

The Belgian police went, at the request of the Foreigners Office, to the home of this Serbian national, who had arrived in Belgium in 2009 with her daughter to join her husband there. She was handcuffed after the door was opened, subjected to a closed center and expelled.

Interference with the right to respect for the home

The Belgian courts considered that the police had not carried out a home visit, but had carried out a check within the framework of domestic law, arguing that nothing in the file suggested that the front door had been opened by force. The government tried to maintain that the check had taken place in front of the home and not inside it.

But the Supreme Court of the Council of Europe ruled on the contrary that the interference with the right to respect for the home was well established.

This interference, moreover, was illegitimate: it did not meet the conditions of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which proclaims the right of everyone to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence, with a few exceptions which did not apply here.

At the time, under the Michel government, a bill allowing the police to enter private homes to arrest illegally staying foreigners had been initiated at the request of the Foreigners Office. The controversy had generated months of renewed policies, before the burial of the project, announced by the Prime Minister who saw his party – the MR – divided on the question.