Partidul Comunistilor (Nepeceristi) and Ungureanu v. Romania, No. 46626/99, ECtHR (Third Section), 3 February 2005

Refusal to register a political party. Compatibility of political programmes with the fundamental principles of democracy. Emergence of a new party based on communist doctrine in a former communist country.

Art. 11 ECHR

1. A party’s constitution and political programme are not incompatible with the concept of a “democratic society” as long as they do not contain any passage that might reasonably be construed as a call for the use of violence for political ends, an uprising or any other form of rejection of democratic principles.

2. There is no justification for hindering a political group that complied with the fundamental democratic principles solely because it had criticised the legal and constitutional order of the country and had sought a public debate in the political arena.

(In the case at hand, the Court found that Romania’s experience of totalitarian communism prior to 1989 could not by itself justify the need to reject the application to register the Romanian Communist Party by the domestic courts).

The ECtHR unanimously held that the refusal to register the applicant political party, before its activities had even started, breached article 11 of the Convention.