ThoseFederal Administrative Court
A three -house household costs its Swiss passport
After his divorce, a Tunisian pleaded his cause with a rare argument before the courts. A child is also concerned.
The judges decided that Yassine must make her Swiss passport.
KESTONE/ANTHONY ANEX
- The Federal Court withdraws the Swiss nationality of a Tunisian after his divorce.
- The man remarried with a Tunisian shortly after his naturalization facilitated.
- The appellant invokes a particular free union to justify his divorce.
- The girl from the second marriage also loses her Swiss passport.
A foreigner who goes with a Swiss can obtain the Swiss passport more easily. It is still necessary that marriage holds. Because otherwise the facilitated naturalization procedure is canceled. The Federal Administrative Court (TAF) sees many cases passing where divorce is consumed after a few years and the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) Then remove the Swiss passport.
The case that occupies us here, however, leaves the standard. It began in 2003 with a marriage between a Tunisian, which we will call Yassine, and a Swiss. The couple will have three children. In 2011, Yassine requests a naturalization, but the SEM immediately asked her to withdraw it. For what? Because man is the subject of convictions. We do not know which ones, but it is anyway crippling anyway.
End of marriage in Neuchâtel
Yassine lets the time pass and held her luck in 2017. His wife and assure him, as the procedure commands him, have no intention to separate or divorce. The SEM warns them that “if a separation or divorce should be requested by one of them before or during the naturalization procedure, or if one of them no longer shared a marital community, naturalization was not possible”. And it sets the test period to a period of eight years.
Spring 2019, Yassine obtained facilitated naturalization. Fall 2019, the couple asks … The divorce, which is validated before the end of the year by a court of the canton of Neuchâtel. And that’s not all. At the end of 2020, Yassine remarried with a Tunisian who gave birth to the following year of a little girl. She obtains the Swiss passport as her father.
Naturalization facilitated canceled
The SEM is then made aware of these developments. He passed two years before he finally decided in 2024. Unsurprisingly, he canceled Yassine’s facilitated naturalization, which automatically loses Swiss nationality to his daughter from the second marriage.
Yassine then resorts to the federal administrative court. In general, in this type of business, the appellant invokes an extraordinary event which torpedoed his couple and which justifies the imperative need for a divorce. But here it is different. Yassine mainly evokes an original reason to try to keep her Swiss passport: a three -house household in free union.
“Living in free union”
Yassine indeed explains to the judges of the TAF that her divorce is nothing of a separation, but marked a will of her ex-wife and him to “live in free union”. The proof? They bought together a large house where his ex-wife has his paramedical cabinet.
According to Yassine, the SEM therefore did not take the measure of this new marital constellation. And he did not betray his promise, taken in 2019, to “form a stable community designed to last”. Simply, the latter does not respond to the classic sense of the term. He also notes that this notion of community is unclear for a layman.
What does the federal administrative court say?
What do the judges of this original argument say? They demolish it quickly. They first note that “conjugal union” is linked to legal consequences, such as the acquisition of nationality. “It therefore does not belong to the individual to define the contours but to the legislator and to the case law.” And the legislator protects marriage, but not free union, as provided Article 159 al. 1 of the Civil Code.
The judges also note that, according to the declarations of the ex-wife to the police, the domestic disputes with Yassine were frequent. And that it was the latter who started talking to him about Bigamy in the years 2017-2018. The judges believe that the “free union” which resulted in it comes above all from the marital difficulties in living together. Conclusion: The couple was not stable, so Yassine contravened their commitment during the facilitated naturalization procedure.
Yassine therefore loses her Swiss passport and, collateral damage, the girl from the second marriage also. He must also pay 1,100 francs in procedural costs.
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