STRØBYE AND ROSENLIND v. DENMARK JUDGMENT “The first purpose of the bill is to introduce the possibility of depriving a person [only] partially of his or her legal capacity, one of the consequences being that such a person will retain the right to vote in general elections. Therefore, it is the opinion of the Government that, according to the principles of democracy, the group of persons with suffrage in elections to a body elected by the people ought to be as wide as possible. The Government wishes to bestow the right to vote in nationwide elections in Denmark upon as many citizens as possible – [including] persons subject to guardianship – within the framework of the Constitution. ... It appears from paragraph 2.4 of the report that as long as a group of persons are deprived of the right to manage their assets, it is a consequence of section 29 of the Constitution that those persons are barred from voting in general elections. It therefore requires an amendment to the Constitution if the deprivation of a person’s legal capacity is not to lead to disenfranchisement. However, section 29 of the Constitution is not a bar to an amendment to or repeal of the guardianship rules to the effect that some of the persons deprived of their legal capacity today would again be allowed to manage their own assets in full or in part. However, in the opinion of the Ministry of Justice, such an arrangement must not have as a consequence [the scenario] that persons in need of the protection afforded by the deprivation of their legal capacity would be left in a situation in which they risked being exposed to financial exploitation or ... a potential risk of losing their assets. It is observed that the group of around 1,900 persons who have been deprived of their legal capacity is a particularly vulnerable population group. It is the opinion of the Ministry of Justice that it would constitute a major impairment of the protection of those persons if the possibility of depriving them of their legal capacity were to be abolished entirely. In such a case, those persons would no longer be prevented from entering into legal transactions and incurring financial commitments, even though they are not able to understand the consequences, thereby exposing their assets to risk. The relevant persons might also risk financial exploitation. Therefore, the Ministry of Justice cannot recommend the full abolition of the possibility of depriving them of their legal capacity. ...” 21. Accordingly, it was the assessment of the Ministry of Justice that the proposed possibility of the partial deprivation of legal capacity was most compatible with the aim of allowing as many citizens as possible the right to vote while protecting a small group of citizens in need of such protection by depriving them of their legal capacity. 22. In the light of the above, the statutory amendment introduced the possibility of the partial deprivation of legal capacity. Thereby it became possible to limit an order restricting a person’s legal incapacity to comprise only particular assets or affairs, such as credit purchase transactions or taking out loans, or to specifying a maximum amount of agreements into which such a person could enter. Persons deprived only partially of their 8