PARTIALLY DISSENTING OPINION OF Mr. C.L. ROZAKIS

      I regret that I am unable to join the majority of the Commission

in its finding of a non-violation of Article 11 in this case. The

reasons which have led me to the conclusion that Article 11 has been

violated are basically two:

1.    When considering whether the applicant's membership of the Health

Care Board required that he be a member of the National Coalition

Party, the administrative courts in Finland based themselves on section

122, subsection 4 of the 1976 Act. This Act by no means directly

imposes a requirement of party or group membership on someone wishing

to become a member of an organ of a municipal federation (or a

subsequent municipal consortium). Equally, no statute of lower rank nor

any previous domestic case-law supporting this interpretation of the

1976 Act has been referred to by the parties. Under such circumstances,

and taking into account the wording of section 122 of the 1976 Act as

well as the decision of a major political party to consent to its being

represented by the applicant (presumably a decision taken on the basis

of some experience among the party members of the practice followed in

such cases), one may already conclude that the judgments of the

administrative courts restricted the applicant's negative freedom of

association without any clear, unambiguous and predictable rules of law

or past case-law justifying such a restriction.

2.    The annulment by the administrative courts of his election to the

Health Care Board had direct repercussions on the personal and

professional situation of the applicant, who had been occupying his

seat on the Board while the proceedings concerning his election had

been pending. The annulment meant, of course, that the applicant lost

his seat.

      The majority of the Commission do not deny that the annulment of

the applicant's election had adverse repercussions on him. Instead they

enter into an assessment of the exact significance of those

repercussions, in an effort to show that the negative effects on the

applicant were insignificant and that, anyway, the fact that he had

agreed to represent the National Coalition Party on the Health Board

"indicates that there were no insurmountable ideological differences

between himself and that party which would, for reasons of conscience,

have made it impossible for him to join the party in order to retain

his seat on the Board" (paragraph 50 of the Report).

      These arguments are not convincing to me. The argument that the

applicant was already at the time of his election to the Health Care

Board employed as the Director of the municipality of Padasjoki and

that, therefore, his board membership "does not ... appear to have been

of any particular significance to him", does not deal with the issue

that a person lost a post of some political significance and was

deprived of the honour to represent a political party just because he

did not want to join that party. Instead of entering into the merits

of the problem, the argument advanced by the majority tries to

circumvent it and find peripheral issues to counterbalance the

applicant's loss of a post which was rather prestigious to him.

      Furthermore, the argument that the applicant had, in any event,

the choice of becoming a member of the National Coalition Party in

order to retain his seat on the Health Care Board is clearly a petitio

principii. It is exactly the fact that he did not wish to become a

member of the party and still retain his seat which lies at the heart

of his complaint that his negative freedom of association was not

respected. This freedom which he ought to have enjoyed was disregarded

by the Finnish authorities.