European Court of Justice Switzerland condemned by the ECtHR after mandatory expulsion

Switzerland has violated the right to respect for family life by ordering the deportation of a man from Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was decided by the European Court of Human Rights.

The man in question had been sentenced to a conditional prison sentence for transporting cocaine. In its decision published on Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) stated that the Swiss judiciary had not correctly weighed up the interests of the father of the family against the public interest.

It had only relied on the nature of the offense and its severity. In doing so, it disregarded the fact that the convicted person no longer posed a threat to public safety. In addition, it gave little weight to other circumstances, such as the low level of guilt of the person concerned, the previously empty criminal record, the merely conditional sentence and the consequences that the expulsion from the country would have for him and his family.