34 THE GEORGIAN LABOUR PARTY v. GEORGIA JUDGMENT 28 March 2004. After all, it is for the Court to determine in the last resort whether the requirements of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 have been met (see Mathieu-Mohin and Clerfayt, cited above, § 52). 105. The Court observes that, pursuant to provisional Articles 128, 128(1) and 128(2) of the EC, five members out of the fifteen-member boards of the electoral commissions at every level, as well as their chairmen, were either directly or indirectly appointed by the President of Georgia. In addition, under Article 128 § 5, at least one member of those electoral commissions was a representative of the President’s National Movement party, since the latter had won the local elections in Tbilisi in 2002 (paragraph 22 in fine above). Pro-presidential forces thus had a relative majority vis-à-vis the representatives of other political parties in electoral commissions at every level. 106. Although there can be no ideal or uniform system to guarantee checks and balances between the different State powers within a body of electoral administration, the Court considers that a proportion of seven members out of fifteen-member electoral commissions, including the chairmen who have the casting votes (Article 22 § 8 of the EC) and are appointed by the President of Georgia and his party, is particularly high in comparison to other legal orders in Europe (see also the opinion of the Venice Commission in this regard, paragraph 48 above). 107. Furthermore, so long as the presidential party – the National Movement – was simultaneously running in the repeat parliamentary election, the Court does not find it implausible that other candidate parties, including the applicant party, might have been placed in an unfavourable position by the presidential majority in the electoral administration. The Government’s argument that, once appointed to office, the members of the electoral commissions had to quit their respective political parties or to suspend their membership, is not reassuring in this regard. The Court is not convinced that a party’s representative to an electoral commission, whom that party has most likely nominated because of his or her loyalty to its values and discipline, would necessarily and immediately become an independent and impartially thinking civil servant just by virtue of filing a formal declaration to that end. 108. The Court further observes that, in contrast to the electoral commissions in the respondent State, in the systems of the Contracting States which it has examined there exist, in one form or another, guarantees against the appointment to electoral commissions of those persons who could reasonably be considered to be involved in an inherent conflict of interests. Moreover, in Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Serbia and the United Kingdom, this incompatibility requirement directly applies to members of political parties or those organisations nominating candidates for election. In the latter two countries, no political party or coalition can obtain a majority within the electoral administration. Such incompatibility rules are aimed at