ŽDANOKA v. LATVIA JUDGMENT 49 DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE ROZAKIS While I concur with a number of the majority’s considerations in this case – including their finding that no separate issue arises in so far as Articles 10 and 11 are concerned – I am unable to agree with some of their conclusions which, in my view, are of central importance in this case, and justify my departure from the majority’s decision to find that there had been no violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 in the circumstances. I would also like, from the outset, to point out that I can in many respects readily follow the thread of thinking of Judge Zupančič as reflected in his own dissent; still, his approach is basically a principled one and I would like to concentrate here primarily on certain considerations of a more, I would say, technical nature than his own broadly theoretical approach. Let me start by what I consider an indispensable preliminary clarification, which may be justified by the somewhat dubious position of the majority with regard to the nature of the rights under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1. In paragraph 115 of the judgment the Court considers that “Article 3 ... is phrased in collective and general terms, although it has been interpreted by the Court as also implying specific individual rights”. This sentence, although it ultimately does not have a radical impact on the Court’s further pronouncements (the sentence which follows in the same paragraph shows that this finding simply affects the standards to be applied for establishing compliance with Article 3, and does not constitute a complete negation of the Article’s substance as containing an individual right), is an obscure generalisation which contradicts not only the drafting history of the Protocol and the previous case-law of the Court, but also the letter of the present judgment itself, paragraph 102 of which states in less dubious, but still open-ended, terms that “the Court has established that this provision also implies individual rights, including the right to vote and to stand for election”. I consider that, regardless of whether Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 is “phrased in collective and general terms”, it is clear that this Article does not simply imply an individual right but actually provides for one. The drafters’ aim was to enrich the Convention with a political right not differing from the other individual human rights contained in the original Convention. The Convention lays down, without exception, individual rights whose bearers are indiscriminately entitled to invoke them in their relations vis-à-vis the States Parties and the Convention institutions. Hence, regardless of other possible functions, Article 3 does confer a specific individual right, which does not differ qualitatively from any other right provided for by the Convention. This conclusion is in agreement with the locus classicus of our case-law, the judgment in Mathieu-Mohin and Clerfayt v. Belgium (2 March 1987, §§ 49-50, Series A no. 113), in which the Court stated, inter alia: