08 Mar Automatic restrictions on the voting rights of persons placed under partial guardianship are not in accordance with the Convention

In the case of Anatoliy Marinov v. Bulgaria (application no. 26081/17, 15.02.2022) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of to the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case concerned Mr Marinov’s voting rights, which he was unable to exercise during the 2017 parliamentary elections in Bulgaria. His right to vote had been automatically withdrawn, in line with the Constitution, when he had been placed under partial guardianship owing to psychiatric issues in 2000.

The Court noted that the essence of the applicant’s complaint was not that he had been divested of his legal capacity, but that as such, he had been barred from participating in any form of election in the country. In the Government’s view, the removal of voting rights from those under guardianship ensured that only persons capable of making informed and meaningful decisions could participate in choosing the country’s legislature. They put forward that each person’s individual situation was assessed by the national courts within the course of the proceedings to place that person under guardianship.

The Court was satisfied that there was a legitimate aim to the measure. However, it noted that the restriction did not distinguish between those under total guardianship and those under partial guardianship. Furthermore, there was nothing to show that the Bulgarian legislature had ever sought to weigh the competing interests or to assess the proportionality of the Constitutional restriction as it stood and thus open the way for the courts to analyse the capacity of a person to exercise the right to vote, independently of a decision to place that person under guardianship. It appeared, moreover, that such a possibility would not be in line with the domestic legal framework.

Mr. Marinov had lost his right to vote due to an automatic, blanket restriction on the right to vote for persons under partial guardianship, without an individual judicial evaluation of his ability to vote. The Court reiterated that such blanket treatment of all those with intellectual or psychiatric disabilities was questionable, and the curtailment of their rights must be subject to strict scrutiny. The Court therefore concluded that the indiscriminate removal of Mr Marinov’s voting rights – without an individual judicial review and solely on the basis of the fact that his mental disability meant that he had been placed under partial guardianship – could not be considered to be proportionate to the legitimate aim for restricting the right to vote. There had accordingly been a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention.

Reference from the official website of the European Court of Human Rights