STRØBYE AND ROSENLIND v. DENMARK JUDGMENT
paragraph 71 above). The Court observes that it also seems to be the case in
other European States, including Albania, Moldova, Serbia and Turkey.
Accordingly, it cannot be concluded that there was common ground
between the national laws of the Contracting States to uncouple
disenfranchisement from deprivation of legal capacity.
112. Nor does the Court discern any common ground at the international
and European level in this respect.
It recalls, on the one hand, that Article 29 of the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities sets out that States
Parties shall guarantee to persons with disabilities political rights and the
opportunity to enjoy them on an equal basis with others. Moreover, in its
report of 30 October 2014 on Denmark, the United Nation Committee on
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities expressed concern that persons who
were deprived of their legal capacity under section 6 of the Guardianship
Act were not allowed, at the time, to vote or to stand for election in
parliamentary, municipal, regional or European Parliament elections, or
referendums (see paragraphs 66 and 70 above).
On the other hand, the Court observes that the Venice Commission in its
Opinion no. 190/2002 had a more cautious approach, accepting that under
certain cumulative conditions, provision may be made for depriving
individuals of their right to vote (see paragraph 68 above).
113. The Court notes the applicants’ submission that the margin of
appreciation should have been narrow, presumably narrower than that
applied by the Supreme Court. The Court agrees that although the margin of
appreciation is generally wide under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 (see, for
example, Ždanoka v. Latvia [GC], no. 58278/00, §§ 105-106, ECHR
2006-IV), it is substantially narrower when a restriction on fundamental
rights applies to a particularly vulnerable group in society, such as the
mentally disabled (see Alajos Kiss, cited above, §§ 41 and 42). In the
present case, however, the Court reiterates that the mentally disabled were
not in general subject to disenfranchisement; nor were persons under
guardianship by virtue of section 5 of the Guardianship Act – as stated
above, only those persons covered by section 5, who, after an individualised
judicial evaluation, had also been found legally incompetent by a court
under section 6 of the Guardianship Act, were subject to
disenfranchisement. The Court therefore agrees with the Government and
the Supreme Court, that the legislation at issue significantly differed from
the legislation examined in Alajos Kiss (cited above), where all persons,
whether under full or partial guardianship, were subject to an automatic,
blanket restriction in respect of suffrage. In the Court’s view, there is
therefore no basis for finding that the Supreme Court in its judgment of
18 January 2018 overstepped the margin of appreciation afforded to it.
114. It is correct, though, as pointed out by the applicants, that apart
from the individualised judicial evaluation of their legal capacity under
31