In the case of Tomenko v. Ukraine the Court held that there had been a violation of the right to free elections.

The case concerned the early ending of the applicant’s term as a member of parliament (MP) for having left the political faction in which he had been elected.

The Court considered that the applicant could hardly have foreseen that his withdrawal from the parliamentary faction would lead to early termination of his term of office as an MP. The constitutional provisions providing for early termination of an MP’s mandate for that reason had never before been applied in practice. Moreover, only two out of the ten MPs who had been elected from the party’s list and who had since withdrawn from its parliamentary faction had their terms of office truncated.

• Press release