Residence Permit of a Ukrainian Wrongly Not Renewed
Published: Monday, Jul 24th 2023, 11:00
Updated At: Friday, Oct 13th 2023, 14:12
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The Federal Administrative Court has overturned a decision not to extend the residence permit of a Ukrainian woman and her daughter two days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In a ruling published on Monday, the Federal Court emphasised that their St. Gallen colleagues must have been aware of the well-known indications of an escalation in Ukraine at the time. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA) had already decided to evacuate the families of the staff of the Swiss Embassy in Kiev on 14 February 2022. In view of this, the Federal Administrative Court could not explain why it did not consider the situation in Ukraine to be an obstacle to the woman and her daughter's return, even though there was no war at the time. The Federal Court therefore overturned the judgment and referred the case back to the Federal Administrative Court. This must now take into account all the prevailing circumstances at the time of its decision. The complainant had married a Frenchman with a residence permit in 2014. In 2019, the couple divorced. For this reason, the Vaud authorities initially refused to extend the woman's residence permit. For important personal reasons, however, the competent office then spoke out in favour of a further stay. The State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) rejected this in January 2021 and ordered the woman to leave Switzerland by mid-April. The Ukrainian national lodged an appeal with the Federal Administrative Court and informed it that she had since given birth to a girl. The father was a Turkish national who had left Switzerland without acknowledging the child. (Judgment 2C_250/2022 of 11.7.2023).
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