Abstract:

Naime Dogan is the wife of a Turkish national economically active in Germany, who was denied an entry visa by the German authorities on the ground, that her German language skills were insufficient. She had passed an oral test but because she was illiterate, she had guessed the answers to a written test and had been unlucky as to the results. On this ground she had been denied a visa for spousal reunion. The refusal of the visa meant that she could only visit her husband on short term tourist visas and she was not able to enjoy a right to reunion with her spouse of 13 years in Germany. She contested the refusal. This then gave rise to two issues of EU law referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter ‘the Court of Justice’) for a preliminary ruling, namely, whether there was a violation of Article 41(1) of the 1970 Additional Protocol to the 1963 Association Agreement between the EU and Turkey (hereinafter ‘Ankara Agreement’), and if not, whether there was a breach of Directive 2003/86 on family reunification, which allows Member States to require compliance with ‘integration measures’.

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