FIFTH SECTIONCASE OF POZDNYAKOV AND OTHERS v. UKRAINE(Applications nos. 33161/20 and 2 others)      JUDGMENT STRASBOURG2 May 2025 This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision.In the case of Pozdnyakov and Others v. Ukraine,The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting as a Committee composed of: Gilberto Felici, President, Diana Sârcu, Mykola Gnatovskyy, judges,and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,Having regard to:the applications against Ukraine lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by the applicants listed in the appended table (“the applicants”), on the various dates indicated therein;the decision to grant legal aid to the applicants;the decision to give notice of the complaints concerning alleged discrimination against the applicants while they participated in elections, to the Ukrainian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ms M. Sokorenko, and to declare the remainder of the applications inadmissible;the parties’ observations;Having deliberated in private on 27 March 2025,Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE1. The applications concern the allegedly discriminatory refusal to allow the applicants to participate in local and parliamentary elections at their current place of residence, where they were registered as internally displaced persons (“IDPs”).2. The applicants used to live in Donetsk, which was where they continued to have their registered place of residence. Following the outbreak of conflict in eastern Ukraine, they moved to Cherkasy where between November 2014 and February 2015 they were registered as IDPs. They continued to reside there permanently thereafter.3. The applicants could not participate in local elections held in Ukraine on 25 October 2015 as they were not on the list of voters at their new place of residence.4. On 27 November 2017 they applied to be included on the list of voters in Cherkasy, but their applications were rejected the following day on the grounds that the applicants did not belong to the relevant territorial community.5. In December 2017 the applicants each instituted judicial proceedings, seeking a change in their electoral address to enable them to participate in local and parliamentary elections (that is, to vote in a single-seat constituency). All their complaints were ultimately dismissed by the appellate and cassation courts (see the appended table for dates). The applicants subsequently lodged three separate constitutional complaints, but these were each rejected (see the appended table for dates) owing to the repeal on 1 January 2020 of the Local Elections Act as well as amendments made to certain provisions of the State Register of Voters Act.6. While their respective administrative claims for a change in electoral address were pending before the Court of Cassation (see paragraph 5 above and the appended table), the applicants attended the polling station on 21 July 2019 to participate in extraordinary parliamentary elections. Those elections were conducted under a mixed-member proportional system, whereby half of the seats in Parliament were elected from the single-seat constituencies by simple plurality and the other half of seats were reserved for candidates from party lists (see Kovach v. Ukraine, no. 39424/02, § 30, ECHR 2008, with further references). Therefore, voters who had their electoral address in the constituency received two ballots, while voters registered in other constituencies – as was the case with the applicants – could vote only for the party lists. The same day, having been denied by the ward election commission the second ballot to vote for a candidate who was running to be elected to represent that constituency, the first and third applicants (but not the second applicant) complained to the district election commission about their being refused the second ballot.7. On 22 July 2019 the district election commission replied to the first and third applicants, stating that it had not observed any violation of their voting rights.8. The applicants complained that they had been refused to participate in local and parliamentary elections at their place of their actual residence in which they were registered as internally displaced persons. They relied on Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention in conjunction with Article 14 of the Convention, and on Article 1 of Protocol No. 12 to the Convention. THE COURT’S ASSESSMENTJOINDER OF THE APPLICATIONS9. Having regard to the similar subject matter of the applications, the Court finds it appropriate to examine them jointly in a single judgment.ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 1 of protocol no. 12 to THE CONVENTION10. The Government submitted that the applicants’ complaints concerning the local elections held on 25 October 2015 had been lodged out of time. Furthermore, there was no evidence that the applicants had genuinely intended to participate in the local elections, as it had only been in November 2017 that they had sought to be included on the list of voters (see paragraph 4 above).11. The applicants argued that, on account of the domestic law as it stood at the time, they had found themselves being denied the right to vote at their new place of residence, a situation that had persisted until legislative changes introduced by the Electoral Code had come into effect on 1 January 2020 (see Selygenenko and Others v. Ukraine, nos. 24919/16 and 28658/16, § 28, 21 October 2021).12. In the light of the parties’ submissions and all the material in its possession, and in so far as the matters complained of are within its competence, the Court finds that the applicants failed to demonstrate that their grievances at national level were promptly raised for these to be considered proof of their intention to participate in the local elections of October 2015 and to be considered recourse to domestic remedies in respect of their complaints about having been denied the right to participate in local elections in violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 12 to the Convention. The Court therefore considers that the applicants’ complaints are manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.ALLEGED VIOLATION of Article 14 of the Convention, taken in conjunction with Article 3 of Protocol No. 113. The Government submitted that the complaints in relation to the parliamentary elections had been lodged out of time and were unsubstantiated and that the second applicant had failed to complain to the higher level electoral commission about the refusal to include her on the list of voters and thus she had not exhausted domestic remedies. They argued that the legislation at the material time was intended to prevent electoral tourism, whereby people moved around and voted in a constituency of which they were not permanent residents.14. The applicants disagreed. They argued that their situation was different from that of other people who lived outside their registered places of residence, as they themselves could not return to their own place of residence and vote there.15. The Court notes that registration on the list of voters was a precondition for the applicants’ participation in the parliamentary elections in so far as voting in single-seat constituencies was concerned. The state of domestic legislation at the material time was clear on that point. The only possibility of challenging the legislative norm for being discriminatory, and thus unconstitutional, was to raise the issue in the domestic ordinary courts followed by a complaint lodged with the Constitutional Court. The applicants made use of those remedies and, once these were exhausted, they subsequently lodged their applications within the six-month time-limit.16. As to the Government’s contention that the second applicant did not complain to the district election commission about her being denied the second ballot (see paragraphs 6 and 7 above), this does not appear to be decisive for her present complaint, as the Government did not substantiate the necessity for the second applicant to have recourse to that remedy in addition to the judicial remedies pursued by her. In any event the ward election commission acted in accordance with the law and there was no suggestion that the district election commission had the competence to depart from the legal provisions that regulated the conduct of parliamentary elections and the compilation of the lists of voters at the material time.17. Therefore, given that this complaint brought by the applicants is not manifestly ill-founded or inadmissible on any other grounds listed in Article 35 of the Convention, it must be declared admissible.18.

Outcome for Article 14: violation