UBEDA AND OTHERS v. ITALY
2026-07-02 · Did the respondent State violate Articles 35, 35-1, 3, 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights on these facts?
The rule
Applied to these facts
Precedents
Passage 0 concerns courts' failure to weigh the applicants' own mental-health vulnerability and parenting improvements when assessing their parenting abilities; in Ubeda the disregarded vulnerability is the first applicant's status as an alleged domestic-violence victim, not an assessment of her parenting capacity.
Passage 1's line of case-law involves children separated from parents whose own remediable difficulties (intellectual deficiency, poor living conditions, physiological imbalance) caused the separation; in Ubeda the separation (shelter placement) was a protective measure against a violent father, not a removal due to the applicants' own remediable difficulties.
Passage 2's finding of disproportionate interference concerns removal of children from parents assessed as parentally inadequate; Ubeda's interference is the shelter placement of the mother and children as victims and the delayed withdrawal of the father's parental responsibility, a different relationship between applicants and the state measure.
Passage 3 concerns an appellate court's specific reliance on an outdated parenting-ability expert report to deny an updated assessment; Ubeda contains no comparable dispute over an outdated parenting assessment.
Passage 4 concerns complaints that authorities failed to implement a parenting-skills support programme before declaring a child adoptable; no such programme or adoption declaration is at issue in Ubeda.
Passage 5 references cases ordering specific measures to restore a family bond after an adoption declaration (Omorefe, D.M. and N.); Ubeda involves custody and shelter-placement delay, not an adoption declaration requiring bond-restoration measures.
Passage 6 concerns grandparents who had exercised two years of court-ordered contact with a grandchild, giving rise to protected 'family life'; in Ubeda the grandparents are mentioned only as witnesses to a violent incident and as property owners, with no contact-based relationship at issue.
The dissent's emphasis that 'exceptional diligence' is required in parent-child relationship proceedings because delay risks a de facto determination parallels Ubeda's documented 'inertia in custody proceedings' and 'failure to act with due diligence and promptness', both involving prolonged delay affecting a parent's relationship with her children.
The strongest argument against
The analysis correctly identifies that the factual predicates for the rules derived from Dragoni and Others v. Italy do not align with the facts of Ubeda and Others v. Italy. The differences in the nature of the interference, the reasons for state intervention, and the parties involved (e.g., grandparents' role) are significant enough to prevent a direct application of the Dragoni precedent. Furthermore, the analysis correctly points out that the provided rule does not address Articles 35, 35-1, or 3, which were part of the original question. Therefore, the conclusion that the rule cannot resolve the question is sound.