Freedom of forming political parties and its restrictions

Abstract

The Court's jurisprudence on the dissolution of political parties is not a very large one. It contains only four cases with Refah Partisi (RP) case not being definitive yet. However, the importance of the Court's judgements is not proportionate with the number of cases as they address to fundamental issues such as relationship between democracy and human rights and clarifies the Court's understanding about democracy. On the other hand, the Court's judgements on political parties bear a special importance in respect of the respondent States. In view of the serious implications of dissolution of a political party, almost all the member States adopted special procedures for such an act. In fact in all four cases the Court has decided the political parties are dissolved by the Constitutional Court of the respondent State. The Court's judgements have inevitable consequences for the Constitution of the respondent State and constitute a ruling on the compatibility of its constitution with the democratic principles which the Court upholds. Let us briefly examine the Strasburg organs' decisions regarding dissolution of political parties.