GROSARU v. ROMANIA JUDGMENT 19 54. Moreover, the Court notes that the Central Electoral Office and the Chamber of Deputies Validation Commission examined the applicant’s challenge and rejected it as being ill-founded. In the Court’s opinion, however, an individual whose appointment as an MP has been rejected has legitimate grounds to fear that the large majority of members of the body having examined the lawfulness of the elections, more specifically the members representing the other political parties of the Central Electoral Office, may have an interest contrary to his own. The rules of composition of that body, made up of a large number of members representing political parties, do not therefore appear to be such as to provide a sufficient guarantee of impartiality. The same conclusion holds good a fortiori for the Chamber of Deputies Validation Commission. 55. Furthermore, the Court notes that no national court ruled on the interpretation of the legal provision at issue. Thus, the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the applicant’s challenge as being inadmissible, considering that the decisions of the Central Electoral Office were final. Subsequently, the Constitutional Court informed the applicant that it had no jurisdiction in electoral matters. In that connection, the Court points out that in Babenko (cited above), it had ruled that the fact that the applicant’s allegations had been examined in the context of judicial proceedings was significant. 56. That approach has, moreover, been confirmed by the Venice Commission in its Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters, which recommends judicial review of the application of electoral rules, possibly in addition to appeals to the electoral commissions or before parliament (see paragraph 22 above). The comparative-law materials also show that several Council of Europe member States have adopted judicial review and only a few States still maintain purely political supervision of elections (see paragraph 28 above). 57. In those circumstances, the Court considers that the lack of clarity of the electoral law as regards national minorities and the lack of sufficient guarantees as to the impartiality of the bodies responsible for examining the applicant’s challenges impaired the very essence of the rights guaranteed by Article 3 of Protocol No. 1. There has therefore been a violation of that Article. II. ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 13 OF THE CONVENTION TAKEN IN CONJUNCTION WITH ARTICLE 3 OF PROTOCOL No. 1 58. Relying in substance on Article 13 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, the applicant complained that he had had no effective remedy by which to challenge the authorities’ refusal to allocate him the parliamentary seat for the Italian minority and, as a result, that there had been a violation of the freedom of expression of the