The judgment in Hora v. the United Kingdom, delivered on 23 September 2025 by Section II of the European Court of Human Rights, forms part of the long-running saga of the ban on prisoner voting in the United Kingdom, which began twenty years earlier with the Grand Chamber's decision in Hirst v. the United Kingdom (No. 2). In that judgment the Court held that the automatic and indiscriminate removal of the right to vote from all convicted prisoners in detention, provided for by section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, was incompatible with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. Since then, the Court had found numerous violations in respect of all elections held up to June 2017. The British legislature, however, had not amended the provision. The Government had merely proposed administrative measures, which in 2018 the Committee of Ministers considered sufficient to close its examination of the Hirst group of cases.

In the case under comment, the applicant had been convicted in 2007 of rape and sexual assault and, having previously been convicted of the same offence, had been sentenced to an indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection. The minimum term of the sentence expired in 2011, but he remained in detention because the Parole Board had not recommended his release. Unable to vote in the general election of 12 December 2019, he applied to Strasbourg complaining of a violation of his right to vote.

The Court confirmed that the removal of the right to vote constituted an interference with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention and reiterated that it pursues legitimate aims: preventing crime by sanctioning the conduct of prisoners and enhancing civic responsibility and respect for the rule of law. The crux of the matter was therefore proportionality. The case was the first concerning an election held after the Committee of Ministers had completed its supervision of the execution of Hirst, and this required the Court first to clarify the scope of its own review.

On this point, the Court developed a nuanced line of reasoning. It held that the failure to enact new legislation did not amount to a failure to execute the Hirst judgment: the Article 46 indication in Greens and M.T., which had set a timetable for the introduction of legislative proposals, had not made legislative amendment the only possible course. Its purpose was rather to complement the work of the Committee of Ministers, which is responsible for assessing with flexibility the adequacy of the measures adopted by the State. It followed that the 2018 Resolution, while not precluding the examination of a fresh application, was to carry weight in the Court's approach. Once the dialogue between Strasbourg, the Committee of Ministers and the respondent State had concluded, it remained for the Court to determine whether the concrete application of the legal framework to an individual applicant had resulted in a violation.

Accordingly, the Court considered that it was not required to assess the compatibility of section 3 in the abstract, or to identify categories of prisoners whose disenfranchisement would be unlawful, and it examined the measure in light of the applicant's circumstances. On the merits the outcome was not in doubt: the gravity of the offences, the recidivism, the risk which the Parole Board still considered to exist and the severity of the sentence made the disenfranchisement proportionate to the aims pursued, as already affirmed in the case-law since Scoppola v. Italy (No. 3). Nor was the expiry of the minimum term of the sentence relevant, since the disenfranchisement was tied to the applicant's continued detention and would end on his release. The Court further observed that, had the applicant brought proceedings before the domestic courts, they could have carried out a proportionality review and the Court would have benefited from their views. It concluded unanimously that there had been no violation.

The judgment fits within the case-law that has progressively attenuated the reach of Hirst. After condemning the blanket ban, subsequent case-law shifted the focus from an assessment of the legislation to an assessment of its application, recognising that the same provision may be compatible with the Convention for one applicant and not for another. Horatakes this approach to its endpoint, in that it accepts that an analysis of individual circumstances is sufficient, indeed preferable, to a review of the legislative regime as such. The reference to the Scottish reforms, which have extended the franchise to those sentenced to terms not exceeding twelve months, and to the lack of political consensus on re-enfranchising prisoners convicted of serious offences, further confirms that the Court attaches considerable weight to developments in domestic democratic debate and to the wide margin of appreciation in this area.

From a critical standpoint, however, the decision raises a number of problematic aspects. The first concerns the relationship between the Court and the Committee of Ministers. By treating the 2018 Resolution as a relevant factor in its own assessment, the Court risks attributing to the closure of supervision an almost presumptive effect of conformity, which is difficult to reconcile with the separation between execution and the finding of violations. The second concerns the difficulty of reconciling individual examination with the systemic nature of the problem: the provision that gave rise to a long series of judgments remains in force in its original form and the Court, by declining to examine it in the abstract, leaves unanswered the question whether it is compatible with the Convention when applied to prisoners convicted of less serious offences. The third concerns the choice of case on which to base this approach: an applicant convicted of extremely serious offences and still considered dangerous represented, by his very position, a situation in which the established case-law made the outcome almost a foregone conclusion.

Ultimately, the judgment confirms that the right of prisoners to vote does not enjoy absolute protection and that States have a wide margin to restrict it in respect of those serving serious or indeterminate sentences, provided that the restriction remains proportionate and temporary. In the present case the Court's scrutiny focused on the applicant's concrete situation rather than on the legislation, and the outcome in favour of the respondent State should be read as confirming the subsidiary role of the Court and its institutional dialogue with the Committee of Ministers, rather than as a formal revision of the principles laid down in Hirst.

 

(Comment by Edin Skrebo)