ECtHR, Fourth Section,  App. Nos. 18592/15 and 43863/15, [2021] ECHR 18592/15, 11 May 2021

Judge Eicke (President), Judges Grozev, Vehabović, Motoc, Harutyunyan, Vilanova, Guerra Martins

Here the ECtHR ruled that Bulgaria had breached Articles 8 and 14 by excluding from entitlement to a family allowance payable to families with only one living parent, single mothers of minor children whose fathers were unknown. The Court found, inter alia, that the exclusion amounted to sex discrimination because “as maternity is determined by the act of birth, in the vast majority of cases it is only children’s paternity that can be unknown” (§110-111). Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was unsympathetic to the argument put for the state that the rule was justified because it “was a regular practice of certain ethnic and social communities in Bulgaria to ‘pretend’ that the mother was a single parent so as to more easily obtain State benefit” (§§98, 121). Continue reading →