NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

courts to interpret domestic law. In light of the materials submitted by the parties, the Court considered that none of the evidence before it disclosed any appearance of a violation by the Spanish courts of the right relied on by the applicant federation. In view of the foregoing, this part of the application was declared manifestly ill-founded and had been rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 3 and 4 of the Convention. States, in the frames of their margins of appreciation, possess the right to set forth a particular language for electoral purposes. In the case of Fryske Nasjonale Partij and Others v. the Netherlands , 1223 the applicant party complained, inter alia , about the refusal of the Electoral Registration Council for the election to register the applicant party member because, in the list of candidates it submitted, the names and addresses of several candidates had not been listed in Dutch. The Electoral Registration Council provided it with time and the possibility to remedy these shortcomings. The case was decided by the Commission, which found that nothing prevented the applicants from submitting a translation into Dutch of their request for registration of the name of the party and the list of candidates respectively. Moreover, neither Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention, nor any other provision of the Convention guarantees the right to use a particular language for electoral purposes. 1224 Consequently, the Commission was of the opinion that the applicant party could not claim that its right to stand as a candidate for election was limited by the requirement that registration could only take place in Dutch. In the previously discussed case of Russian Conservative Party of Entrepreneurs and Others v. Russia , 1225 the applicant party complained under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention that its right to stand for election had been violated. 1226 The applicants here were the Russian Conservative Party of Entrepreneurs (‘applicant party’) and two Russian nationals. In September 1999, the applicant party nominated 151 candidates for the elections to the State Duma. The CEC confirmed receipt of the party’s list of candidates and the party paid its electoral deposit. Later on, in November 1999, the CEC refused registration of the applicant party’s list, having found that certain people on the list had provided incorrect information about their income and property. Section 51(11) of the Elections Act provided for disqualification of the entire party’s list in the event of “withdrawal” of one of the top three candidates on the list. That provision was interpreted by the CEC as encompassing all instances of “withdrawal”, which led to the disqualification of all the candidates. The applicant party did not agree with such an interpretation and successfully challenged the decision of the CEC before the domestic courts. On 22 November 1999, it obtained a final judgment explaining that section 51(11) applied only if the “withdrawal” had been voluntary. Nonetheless, later that month a deputy prosecutor-general lodged an application for supervisory review and the Presidium of the Russian Supreme 1223 Fryske Nasjonale Partij and Others v. the Netherlands (dec.), no. 11100/84, 12 December 1985, not published. 1224 MALLOY, T. and MARKO, J. Minority governance in and beyond Europe: celebrating 10 years of the European yearbook of minority issues. Leiden : Brill Academic Publishers, 2014, p. 141. 1225 Russian Conservative Party , cited above. 1226 LÉCUYER, 2014, cited above, p. 99.

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