The applicant, A, Pakistan national, has applied for residence permit based on family reunification. A, the applicant, and B, the family reunifier, were married in 2013 by telephone, when A was in Pakistan and B in Finland. The marriage was witnessed by a witness authorised by A and two by B, witnesses present at the event.  

However, the marriage was not registered in the Finnish population information system and no legal marriage certificate was presented to prove the marriage. The applicants were not able to obtain, beyond their control, a legalisation of their marriage and a marriage certificate as it was requested by the FIS. The FIS rejected the application for family reunification and the administrative court confirmed the negative decision.

The Supreme Administrative Court granted leave to appeal and referred the case back for examination to FIS.

The Court noted that in the applicants could not obtain a certificate beyond their will and considered that the applicant’s right to family reunification had been restricted beyond what was necessary within the meaning of section 5 of the Aliens Act. It held that the authority had not raised any suspicions that the marriage certificate was forged or otherwise false and stated that the application for a residence permit could not be rejected on the sole ground that the document was not legalised, or it did not enter in the population information system.

The Supreme Administrative Court found that the spouses had a connection to the country where the marriage took place and that in Pakistan the so-called Proxy Marriages were legal. In principle, a marriage had to be considered valid in Finland also in terms of the favor matrimonii principle and an assessment was necessary on whether there was a special reason for considering the marriage valid in Finland. The family reunifier did not reside in Finland as a refugee and it was necessary to assess whether other specific reasons for the marriage were exceptionally invoked. The Supreme Administrative Court dismissed B's argument that the prevalence of the practice could be regarded as a special reason within the meaning of the Marriage Act.

Other criteria when assessing the fulfilment of a special reason, is to give attention to the spouses' links with the State of marriage and to the length of family life. After assessing the report on the cohabitation and other factors affecting the assessment of the stability of the marriage, the Supreme Administrative Court found that the spouses had indicated a clear intention to start family life as spouses and that there were no indications in the case that the marriage had been contracted in a different way than usual for purposes other than family life.

The Supreme Administrative Court concluded that the marriage had to be considered valid in Finland when deciding whether the applicant is a family member within the meaning of section 37 (1) of the Aliens Act and the case was returned to the Finnish Immigration Service for re-examination.