Information Note on the Court’s case-law 259
February 2022
Anatoliy Marinov v. Bulgaria - 26081/17
Judgment 15.2.2022 [Section IV]
Article 3 of Protocol No. 1
Free expression of the opinion of the people
Disproportionate automatic disenfranchisement of applicant due to partial guardianship order based on his mental disability with no individualised judicial review of voting capacity: violation
Facts – The applicant was diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and was placed under partial guardianship. As a result, he automatically lost the right to vote. He unsuccessfully brought proceedings for the restoration of his legal capacity and thus was unable to vote in the 2017 parliamentary elections. Subsequently, in the context of fresh proceedings, his legal capacity was restored and the guardianship lifted.
Law – Article 1 of Protocol No. 3: The restriction had been lawful and pursued the legitimate aim of ensuring that only persons capable of making informed and meaningful decisions could participate in the choice of legislature in the country. The restriction, however, did not distinguish between persons under total guardianship and those under partial guardianship but concerned citizens “placed under guardianship” in general. The restriction was removed only once guardianship was lifted. The Court did not consider it necessary to take a position on the relevance of the data submitted by the parties regarding the proportion of Bulgaria’s voting-age population that had been disenfranchised on account of being under guardianship as a whole, as, in any event, the impugned restriction appeared to be disproportionate to the legitimate aim pursued by the State in this case.
In particular, the Court had already accepted that this was an area in which, generally, a wide margin of appreciation should be granted to the national legislature to decide on the procedure for assessing the fitness to vote of mentally disabled persons. However, there was no evidence that the Bulgarian legislature had ever sought to weigh the competing interests or to assess the proportionality of the restriction and thus, open the way for the courts to conduct a particular analysis of the capacity of the applicant to exercise the right to vote, independently of a decision to place a person under a guardianship. The Government had failed to prove that domestic judicial practice allowed for the possibility of lifting the restriction on a person’s right to vote in cases where that person remained deprived of his or her legal capacity. It also appeared that such possibility would not be in line with the domestic legal framework.
The applicant had lost his right to vote as the result of the imposition of an automatic, blanket restriction on the franchise of those under partial guardianship (with no option for an individualised judicial evaluation of his fitness to vote); this had placed him in a situation similar to that of the applicant in the case of Alajos Kiss v. Hungary. The applicant might therefore claim to be a victim of a measure incompatible with the relevant established principles.
It was questionable to treat people with intellectual or mental disabilities as a single class and the curtailment of their rights had to be subject to strict scrutiny. Accordingly, the indiscriminate removal of voting rights without an individualised judicial evaluation, solely on the grounds of mental disability necessitating partial guardianship, could not be considered to be proportionate to the legitimate aim for restricting the right to vote.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 3,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(See Alajos Kiss v. Hungary, 38832/06, 20 May 2010, Legal Summary)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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