The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday ruled against Koço Kokëdhima who complained to the court after his removal from Albania’s Parliament due to the former MP’s conflict of interest as the sole shareholder of a private joint-stock company, Abissnet SHA, that provided services to various public authorities.
The court found the Albanian Constitutional Court’s decision to remove Kokëdhima was not arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable and was a foreseeable conflict of interest, concluding there were no violations of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
In 2013, Koço Kokëdhima was elected to parliament. At various points between the constitutional court’s removal of his position on 3 June 2016, he sought guidance on the conflict of interest as the sole shareholder of Abissnet SHA from the High Inspectorate and Speaker of the House. The company concluded contracts for providing internet and fixed telephony services to various public authorities before the election and continued to draw income under these contracts after the applicant started his parliamentary mandate.
The 2016 decision found contravention of Article 70(3) of the Albania Constitution that MPs “may not carry out any profit-making activity that stems from the property of the state or of local government, nor may they profit from this property.” The 6-month delay and continued payments from Kosovo after he sold his shares in the company in 2014, were held as a conflict of interest and resulted in his removal from office. The ECHR considered whether the constitutional court’s interpretation had been overly broad and not foreseeable resulting in contravention of the right to free elections. The removal from office as an MP was held to be neither arbitrary nor insufficiently foreseeable, in line with the constitutional court’s reasoning of a conflict of interest.
Kokëdhima further argued under Article 8 of the convention that the decision removing him from office had been widely covered by the media and tarnished his reputation based on an unfair assumption that he had taken advantage of his position to profit from public resources. Article 8 sets out the right to respect for private and family life and states that there shall be no interference by a public authority unless justified. The ECHR considered this complaint succinctly and found that Kokëdhima had not shown serious interference with his private life amounting to a serious attack on his reputation but rather the removal a was foreseeable outcome of his conduct.
The judgment is an important reiteration of the principle set down in the case of Yaboloko and the ECHR’s approach, that, unlike other provisions in the convention, the right to free elections in Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 “does not contain an express reference to the “lawfulness” of measures taken by the State, but where the right is impeded the law should satisfy minimum requirements of accessibility and foreseeability.” The removal of Kokëdhima, however, was ultimately neither arbitrary nor insufficiently foreseeable but contributes to the case law on Article 3 of Protocol No.1.
