STRØBYE AND ROSENLIND v. DENMARK JUDGMENT THE FACTS 3. The first applicant was born in 1966. He lives in Frederiksberg. The second applicant was born in 1987. He lives in Greve. The applicants were represented by Mr Christian Dahlager, a lawyer practising in Copenhagen. 4. The Government were represented by their Agent, Mr Michael Braad, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and their Co-Agent, Mrs Nina HolstChristensen, from the Ministry of Justice. 5. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows. 6. The first applicant was declared legally incompetent to manage his financial and personal affairs by the Copenhagen City Court (Københavns Byret) on 20 March 1984, as the conditions for declaring him legally incompetent under sections 2(1)(i) and 46 of the then applicable Act on Legal Competence (myndighedsloven) and part 43 of the Administration of Justice Act (retsplejeloven) were found to have been met. 7. In 1996, the Act on Legal Competence was replaced by the Guardianship Act (værgemålsloven), which distinguished between (i) persons who under the Act’s section 5 were subject to guardianship but remained legally competent, and (ii) persons who were both subject to guardianship under section 5 and had been deprived of their legal capacity under section 6. Only those who had been deprived of their legal capacity under section 6 were to be considered legally incompetent. 8. The second applicant was placed under financial guardianship and deprived of his legal capacity by order of the District Court of Roskilde (Retten i Roskilde) on 23 March 2009. The District Court gave the following reasoning: “On the basis of the [submitted] medical certificate, it is considered a fact that [the second applicant] is unable to manage his financial affairs because of mental disability, for which reason he requires financial guardianship and requires to be deprived of his legal capacity in order to prevent him from incurring more debt. Accordingly, the conditions for financial guardianship set out in section 5(1) of the Guardianship Act and the conditions for deprivation of legal capacity set out in section 6(1) of the Guardianship Act have been met. For that reason, an order for financial guardianship and deprivation of legal capacity is granted.” 9. Under section 29 of the Constitution, and section 1 of the Danish Act on Parliamentary Elections, persons who were legally incompetent did not have the right to vote in general elections. 10. Consequently, the applicants were not entitled to vote, inter alia, in the parliamentary elections that took place on 18 June 2015. 11. By a statutory amendment (Act no. 391 of 27 April 2016), persons who were legally incompetent were given the right to vote in European Parliament elections and in local and regional elections, but not in national parliamentary elections. 2