The German Constitutional Court strengthens the rights of foreigners without citizenship, an Albanian is the cause

It was the lawsuit of a boy from Kosovo in the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe that brought this decision: According to the Constitutional Court, drug offenses in the past are not sufficient grounds for deportation.

The young man from Kosovo is one of those people who in Germany are legally called "actually local", almost local. We are talking about foreign people who do not possess German citizenship, but were either born in the Federal Republic of Germany or came as young children and have taken root in this country for years. In addition to the right to respect for family and private life, according to the European Convention on Human Rights, they can refer to the jurisdiction of the German Constitutional Court as well of the constitutional right to the free development of personality, German judges argued.

A young man from Kosovo who came to Germany as a child

The plaintiff from Kosovo had come to Germany quite young, had gone to a German kindergarten, then managed to get a certificate of secondary education. He had qualified as a logistics worker in Germany. From 2018 he had to appear before the court several times due to several drug-related offenses and partly assaults with grievous bodily harm.

At the beginning of 2022, he was deported from Germany to Kosovo. The foreigners' office had argued the decision taken for deportation with the high risk of repeating criminal offenses.

With the lawsuit filed, the young Kosovar managed to prove to the court that he is "actually local" and that he committed the criminal offense at the age of adolescence. Meanwhile, he presented to the court the completion of an anti-drug therapy and that he has complied with the measures of reintegration into society.

Criticism of the German constitutionalists for the first decisions of the courts

Two courts had previously rejected the lawsuit of the boy from Kosovo, the Administrative Court and the Bavarian Administrative Court, VGH in Munich. But the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe with the decision of Thursday (23.05.) annulled the decisions of both courts. The German constitutional judges, in their arguments, said that the VGH had not seriously verified whether the plaintiff, due to his roots in Germany, could be considered as "actually native". In considering the interests and verifying the proportionality of the measures, also take into account the basic right to the free development of the personality.

It is true that in drug-related criminal offenses there is a risk of repetition, the judges emphasized. But in the case of "actually local" persons, the foreigner's offices and the courts must verify more carefully and justify this. "For this reason, an individual prognosis of the risk related to the specific case is required under the consideration of the current facts", which in the decision of the Bavarian Court of Administration was not done properly, argued the German Constitutional Court./DW