On 5 June, the Committee of Ministers ended its supervision of the execution of the ECHR judgment in M.A. v Denmark. The case concerns the unjustified statutory three-year waiting period for family reunification of the applicant who had fled Syria in 2015 and was granted temporary protection. His application for family reunification with his wife was rejected, because he had not held a resident permit for three years as required by the law. The Court found that, given the lack of an individualised assessment of the applicant’s case and the length of the wait to be able to avail himself of his right to family reunification, the authorities had failed to strike a fair balance between the needs of the applicant individually and the economic well-being of the country in their assessment of his application to be reunited with his wife.
Following the ECHR judgment, amendments to the Alien Act were adopted by Parliament in June 2022 and entered into force on 1 July 2022 reducing the previous three-year waiting period to two years. An individual granted temporary protection status will thus generally have access to family reunification after two years, except in certain exceptional circumstances.
