ECHR receives complaint about concealing personal history reports of party leaders

The Media Law Institute has sent the application to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) asking to recognize the failure to provide the personal history reports of leaders of political parties in response to the request of a non-governmental organization as violation of the right to freedom of expression.

This is stated on the Institute’s website.

In November 2014, the Media Law Institute appealed to the Central Election Commission of Ukraine to provide the copies of personal history reports of heads of electoral lists of six political parties that won the elections to the Verkhovna Rada in 2014, namely, of Vitali Klitschko, Yulia Tymoshenko, Oleh Liashko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Hanna Hopko and Yuri Boiko. The Commission refused to provide the documents, referring to confidentiality of the information.

“We have one main explanation why the CEC did not comply with the law. The CEC of Yanukovych-Azarov regime, which continues to perform its functions despite the expiration of the term of office, is not able to make democratic decisions in the interests of citizens,” Director of the Media Law Institute Taras Shevchenko said.

“The position of the CEC does not comply with the legislation,” said the lawyer of the Media Law Institute Vita Volodovska. “The law on parliamentary elections clearly states that the information contained in the documents submitted by candidates for registration (including personal history reports) is open.”

However, the national courts of all instances, in which the decision of the CEC was appealed, also refused to uphold the request to disclose the personal history reports of politicians.

“Since the very beginning we knew that the judicial practice in such cases, which had been considered by the administrative courts earlier, shows that a decision may not be in our favor,” Taras Shevchenko noted. “But we were ready to go through all the instances and appeal to the European court to seek protection of the right of citizens to know whom they elect to the Parliament.”

If the ECHR declares the application admissible, the case will be considered on the merits within several years.