SITAROPOULOS AND GIAKOUMOPOULOS v. GREECE JUDGMENT 17 53. In the applicants’ view, it was clear from the Council of Europe instruments, and in particular Parliamentary Assembly Resolution 1459 (2005), Recommendation 1714 (2005) and the Venice Commission’s Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters, that member States were under an obligation to make the right to vote effective. They noted that, according to the study to which the Chamber referred in its judgment of 8 July 2010, at least twenty-nine Council of Europe member States guaranteed in practice the right of expatriates to vote from abroad in parliamentary elections. 2. The Government 54. The Government argued that the constitutionally recognised possibility of enacting legislation governing the exercise of the right to vote by voters living outside Greece could not be a decisive factor in determining whether there had been a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 in the present case. In particular, they stressed that Article 51 § 4 of the Constitution, far from imposing any obligation on the legislature, was optional in nature. Moreover, the Court’s case-law on Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 recognised that Contracting States had a wide margin of appreciation when it came to organising their electoral systems. The Government added that, in accordance with Article 51 § 4 of the Constitution, voting arrangements for Greek nationals outside Greece had to be adopted by a majority of two-thirds of Parliament; this confirmed the need to secure very broad political consensus on the subject in Greece. Furthermore, it had already attempted to pass a law in 2009 on voting rights for Greek expatriates, a fact which demonstrated the political will to find a solution to the problem. In the Government’s view, defining these arrangements was an extremely complex and delicate political issue. Blanket recognition of the right of expatriates to vote in parliamentary elections from their place of residence could give rise to considerable political and economic problems, not just in Greece but also in other member States of the Council of Europe. 55. The Government referred to the case-law of the Court and the former European Commission of Human Rights regarding the compatibility with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 of measures making the right to vote subject to a residence requirement. They contended that, according to that case-law, imposing such a requirement was justifiable. They referred to the legitimate concern of the legislature to limit the influence of citizens living abroad in parliamentary elections, which focused primarily on issues affecting citizens living in the country. In the Government’s view, expatriates could not legitimately argue that they were affected by the decisions of the country’s political institutions to a greater extent than Greek citizens living in Greece. 56. Referring in particular to the parliamentary input into the 2001 revision of the Constitution, the Government observed that the legislation referred to in Article 51 § 4 of the Constitution continued to be optional. Although Article 51 § 4 made reference for the first time to postal voting,