Limassol: The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled in favor of Georgios Papadopoulos in his case against Cyprus, citing a breach of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 regarding the right to free elections under the European Convention on Human Rights.
According to Cyprus News Agency, the case revolves around a legislative gap in Cypriot law, which failed to address the situation of filling a parliamentary seat that became vacant before the start of the parliamentary term. Papadopoulos, a runner-up candidate in the 2016 parliamentary elections for the Solidarity Movement, was appointed after a Member of the European Parliament chose not to assume her parliamentary seat, preferring to continue her role as an MEP. However, Papadopoulos’s appointment was annulled by the Electoral Court in 2017, 2018, and 2020 due to the absence of a legal framework for such a substitution.
The ECHR found the repeated annulment of Papadopoulos’s mandate to be a violation of his electoral rights and those of the electorate. The application to the ECHR was lodged on April 21, 2021, and the judgment was delivered by a Chamber of seven judges. The Court criticized the Cypriot authorities for not addressing the legal gap through legislative or judicial means, thus thwarting the electorate’s decision from May 2016.
The ECHR concluded that the interference with Papadopoulos’s rights was unlawful and ordered Cyprus to compensate him with 8,000 euros for non-pecuniary damages.