Logo law and pluralism
Logo Università Bicocca

Aziz v. Cyprus, No. 69949/01, ECtHR (Second Section), 22 June 2004

Date
22/06/2004
Type Judgment
Case number 69949/01

Abstract

Unequal treatment in elections between Cypriot citizens and discrimination on ethnic grounds.

Normative references

Art. 14 ECHR
Art. 3 Prot. 1 ECHR

Ruling

1. States enjoy a wide margin of appreciation in regulating parliamentary elections, but this should not be such as to exclude some citizens from political participation. When this happens it is a violation of Article 3 Protocol 1 of the ECHR.

2. In particular, preventing the right to vote for certain citizens on the basis of their ethnicity constitutes discrimination in violation of art. 14 ECHR.
(In the present case, the Cypriot Ministry of the Interior's refusal to allow one of its nationals to be entered on the electoral roll for the parliamentary elections on the sole ground that he is of Turkish ethnicity constitutes blatant discrimination, which does not find objective or reasonable justification).