Two rulings concerning the Netherlands
The Court has clarified what constitutes “family life” between adults under the Convention in two rulings concerning the Netherlands.
The cases Kumari v. the Netherlands and Martinez Alvarado v. the Netherlands concerned complaints about refusals to grant family reunification. In both cases the Court reiterated that there could be no family life between parents and their adult children or adult siblings unless they could demonstrate “additional elements of dependence, involving more than normal emotional ties”. It clarified that the Court’s dependency test required an individualised review of the relationship at issue, and other relevant circumstances. The additional elements could be related to health, financial or material dependence and would often be the result of a combination of those elements.