Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Belgium

Čonka v. Belgium

European Court of Human Rights · Belgium · 2002-02-05 · Regional court or body

Citation: App. no. 51564/99
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Was summoning Slovak Roma families to a police station and deporting them as a group lawful?

What the court decided

No. The arrest by a misleading summons breached liberty, and the removal was a collective expulsion without an effective remedy.

In plain language

Belgian police asked Roma families to come in to “complete their files”, then arrested and deported them together. The Court found an unlawful collective expulsion.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Polisi Belgia meminta keluarga Roma datang untuk “melengkapi berkas”, lalu menangkap dan mendeportasi mereka bersama-sama. Mahkamah menyatakan itu pengusiran kolektif yang tidak sah.

Pertanyaan: Apakah memanggil keluarga Roma Slovakia ke kantor polisi lalu mendeportasi mereka berkelompok sah?

What happened afterwards

1999-10: Arrest and deportation.
2002-02-05: Judgment.

Sources

HUDOC (search)

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/echr-conka-2002/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.