Judgments

Obliging persons seeking official recognition of their local religious community to undertake to respect the Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights and all existing laws, not to collaborate in acts contrary to these norms and to make all necessary efforts to ensure that their local religious community is not associated with statements or acts contrary to the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights and is not incompatible with the freedom to manifest one’s religion through worship.

The right to donate blood is not a fundamental right. The legislature must balance the interest of men who have had sexual contact with another man in donating blood against the interest of everyone in receiving blood free of serious infectious diseases transmissible through blood. Without violating the principle of equality and non-discrimination, the protection of the health or even life of the recipients of blood may be considered so fundamental an interest that it requires the exclusion of all options that do not provide a sufficiently high level of health protection for the recipients.

The law which does not require courts to give formal reasons for authorisations they issue to the tax authorities granting access to inhabited premises is incompatible with the right to respect for individuals’ homes.

According to the Constitutional Court, the Law on Transgender Persons of 25 June 2017 is unconstitutional in several respects. Firstly, there is gap in the law in that the sex recorded on birth certificates is confined to the binary categories of man or woman. On the basis of the principle of self-determination, the legislature sought to enable individuals to bring the gender recorded on their birth certificates into line with what they experience themselves. From this angle, there is no reasonable justification for persons with non-binary gender identities to be required to accept the recording on their birth certificates of their sex on the basis of a choice between man and woman which does not match their gender identity as they actually experience it themselves. Nevertheless, it falls to the legislature alone to draw up a solution to remedy the unconstitutionality. The Court also annulled the provisions which in principle make changes of the sex recorded on birth certificates irrevocable and allow first names to be changed on grounds of trans identity only once. Although provision is made for a complex procedure in the family courts for returning to the sex originally recorded, it is not justified in relation to the goals pursued. It discriminates against persons whose gender identity changes over time.

The requirement for members of staff of social security institutions bound by professional confidentiality to report to the authority responsible for criminal prosecutions any information gathered in the course of their duties which could constitute serious evidence of a terrorist offence under the Criminal Code is incompatible with the principle of offences and penalties being established by law. The right to respect for family life of an individual who gives confidential information to a member of staff of a social security institution bound by professional confidentiality is not breached by the law which requires the staff member concerned to report to the authority responsible for criminal prosecutions any administrative information which that authority requests in connection with investigation of terrorist offences.

Legislation which prevents the judicial establishment of the paternity of a man who was a partner in a parental project which resulted in the birth of a child conceived through medically assisted procreation with a third-party donor breaches the principle of equality and non-discrimination and the child’s right to respect for private and family life.