Tasev v. North Macedonia, No. 9825/13, ECtHR (First Section), 16 May 2019

Refusal by the Macedonian authorities to grant a candidate's request to the State Judicial Council to change his ethnic affiliation.

Art. 8 ECHR
Art. 14 ECHR
Art. 1 Prot. 12 ECHR

1. Ethnic affiliation constitutes an aspect of an individual's identity that falls within the personal sphere protected by Article 8 ECHR. Therefore, every individual has full freedom to define his or her ethnic identity. The refusal of the Macedonian authorities to change the applicant's registration on the electoral roll on ethnic grounds constitutes an unjustifiable interference with his private life.

2. For the purposes of individual ethnic affiliation, one important aspect concerns the subjective dimension, understood as the free choice to declare which ethnic group one considers oneself to belong to, to the detriment of the objective dimension, which is instead linked to factors that can be externalized and measured according to schemes shared by the minority and by public power.
(The applicant, an ordinary judge, in view of the elections for the State Judicial Council, asked to change his ethnic affiliation on the electoral roll from Bulgarian to Macedonian. The Macedonian authorities rejected his request on the grounds that it was made after the publication of the announcement of the elections of the new members of the Council).