By decision No. 126/2020 of the Syros Court of First Instance, it was ordered that a child be returned from Greece, where his mother had illegally removed him, to England, where the child’s habitual residence was prior to his abduction. In particular, citing the pandemic of Covid 19 disease, the mother moved the child from England, where the family lived, to an island in the Aegean Sea in order to stay at her mother’s residence. Having found that the two parents had joint custody of the minor child and that the child’s habitual residence prior to the removal was in England, the court held that the removal of the child from his mother and their residence in another country was unlawful and constituted international child abduction within the meaning of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and European Regulation 2201/2003. The court then ordered the return of the child to England by 10 August at the latest, and even threatened the mother with a fine of €1,000 and 20 days’ personal detention for each breach of the order.

The case was also reported in the British media (see, for example)