Title	L.B. v. Lithuania (Application No. 38121/20)
Publisher	Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights
Publication Date	16 June 2022
Country	Lithuania
Topics	Travel documents
Cite as	L.B. v. Lithuania (Application No. 38121/20), Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 16 June 2022, available at: https://www.refworld.org/cases,ECHR,62aaf25b4.html [accessed 17 May 2023]
Comments	Accordingly, the Court finds that the refusal to issue the applicant with an alien’s passport was taken without carrying out a balancing exercise and without ensuring that such a measure was justified and proportionate in his individual situation (see, mutatis mutandis, Pfeifer, cited above, § 57). That refusal was based on formalistic grounds, namely that he had not demonstrated that he was personally at risk of persecution and that he was not considered a beneficiary of asylum at that time, without adequate examination of the situation in his country of origin, as well as on the purported possibility of obtaining a Russian passport, without any assessment of whether that possibility was accessible to him in practice in view of his particular circumstances. 97. In the light of the foregoing, the Court concludes that it has not been demonstrated that the interference with the applicant’s right to freedom of movement was necessary in a democratic society. 98. There has accordingly been a violation of Article 2 of Protocol No. 4 to the Convention.
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