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The case M. P. and Others v. Greece (No. 2068/24) concerned a mother and her two young children who challenged the decisions of the Greek courts ordering the children to be returned to their father in the United States.
The parents, who held dual citizenship (Greece and the United States), lived in the United States, where their children were born in 2016 and 2018. Due to recurring family conflicts, in 2020 the mother left for Greece with the children with her husband’s consent. It was initially intended that the mother and children would return to the United States; however, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the mother decided to remain on Rhodes, where the children began attending school and she herself found employment.
In the return proceedings initiated by the father, the first-instance court in Rhodes, taking into account the children’s integration into their new environment and the father’s inability to provide appropriate care, held that returning to the United States would pose a serious risk of psychological harm to the children. The Court of Appeal overturned the decision and ordered that the children be returned to their father in the United States. The Court of Cassation upheld that decision, and the children were returned to the father while the mother remained on Rhodes.
The ECtHR noted that the central issue was whether the decision-making process was aimed at ensuring the best interests of the children and, in particular, whether the existence of a “grave risk” to them, within the meaning of Article 13(1)(b) of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, had been ruled out.
At the same time, the ECtHR, taking into account its case law under Article 8 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in child abduction cases, noted that there is currently no clear positive obligation for national courts to examine, on their own initiative, whether it is appropriate to hear the views of the children in proceedings affecting their rights. However, in view of relevant international instruments, in particular the recent Recommendation CM/Rec (2025)4 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to member states, a consensus has been reached among the participating states on the obligation to provide the child with a real and effective opportunity to express his or her views, either directly or by other means, and to assist the child in doing so through various mechanisms and child-adapted procedures.
The Court held that the time had come to affirm that national authorities are obliged to consider whether it is appropriate to hear the child, directly or otherwise, and, where necessary, to dismiss the child’s views by means of a reasoned decision.
The ECtHR concluded that, given the specific circumstances of the case (conflicting decisions of national courts and the radical change in the children’s living conditions), the national courts, acting in accordance with the obligation to ensure the best interests of the children, should have made efforts to assess the appropriateness of hearing the children — regardless of whether the applicants had expressly requested it.
In this case, the national courts did not make use of all the means available to them to exclude any “grave risk” within the meaning of Article 13(1)(b) of the Hague Convention. Accordingly, the decision-making process did not meet the procedural requirements of Article 8 of the Convention, and the forced return of the children could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society.
A more detailed description of this judgment will be available in upcoming ECtHR case law reviews, and the previous review can be accessed at the following link: https://court.gov.ua/storage/portal/supreme/ogliady/Oglyad_ESPL_06_2025.pdf.
The official text of the judgment M. P. and Others v. Greece (No. 2068/24) is available on the website of the European Court of Human Rights: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/?i=001-244865.
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