ECJ – Judgement of 12.09.2006, Spain v. United Kingdom, C-145/04 - EP – Elections – Right to vote – Commenwealth citizens residing in Gibraltar and not having citizenship of the Union.
Keywords:
European Parliament – Elections – Right to vote – Gibraltar – Citizenship of the Union – Nationality – Commonwealth.Abstract
The judgment under study concerns the controversy between Spain and the United Kingdom on the sovereignty of Gibraltar and affects the legal status of Gibraltar in the European Union. The point of departure for this study stems from the adoption by the United Kingdom of the European Parliament (Representation) Act –EPRA 2003, in order to comply with the judgment of the ECHR in the case of Matthews vs UK, 1999. Spain points out that its action covers solely elections as they are held in Gibraltar and not the United Kingdom’s recognition of the right to the so-called Qualifying Commonwealth Citizens (QCCs) residing in its territory to vote for the European Parliament. It raises two pleas in law in support of its action: a) By the first, it claims that the extension of the right to vote in European Parliament elections, as provided for by the EPRA 2003, to persons who are not United Kingdom nationals for the purposes of Community law infringes the EC Treaty’s Articles that, according to the Spanish claims, recognise the right to vote and to stand as candidates of citizens of the European Union alone; b) By the second, it claims that the creation of a combined electoral region (combing the territory of Gibraltar with an existing electoral region in England to form a new electoral region) is contrary to the annex I of the Act concerning the election of the representatives of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage (1976) and to the commitments made by the United Kingdom Government in the Declaration of February 18, 2002. But the ECJ dismissed the action of Spain. In our opinion, a Spanish argument focused on the limitations of the annex I of the 1976 Act would have been able to direct the arguments of the parties and the foundations of the ECJ to a different ending.Downloads
Published
2008-05-14
Issue
Section
CASE LAW COURT OF JUSTICE OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
License
Copyright
Submission of a manuscript to the RDCE implies having read and accepted the journal's editorial guidelines and instructions for authors. When a work is accepted for publication, it is understood that the author grants the RDCE exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution and, where appropriate, sale of his manuscript for exploitation in all countries of the world in printed version, as well as any other magnetic, optical and digital media.
Authors shall transfer the publishing rights of their manuscript to RDCE so that it may be disseminated and capitalised on Intranets, the Internet and any web portals and wireless devices that the publisher may decide, by placing it at the disposal of users so that the latter may consult it online and extract content from it, print it and/or download and save it. These activities must comply with the terms and conditions outlined on the website hosting the work. However, the RDCE authorises authors of papers published in the journal to include a copy of these papers, once published, on their personal websites and/or other open access digital repositories. Copies must include a specific mention of RDCE, citing the year and issue of the journal in which the article was published, and adding a link to the RDCE website(s).
A year after its publication, the works of the RDCE will be under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivative 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which allows third parties to share the work as long as its author and its first publication is indicated, without the right to commercial exploitation and the elaboration of derivative works.
Plagiarism and scientific fraud
The publication of work that infringes on intellectual property rights is the sole responsibility of the authors, including any conflicts that may occur regarding infringement of copyright. This includes, most importantly, conflicts related to the commission of plagiarism and/or scientific fraud.
Practices constituting scientific plagiarism are as follows:
1. Presenting the work of others as your own.
2. Adopting words or ideas from other authors without due recognition.
3. Not using quotation marks or another distinctive format to distinguish literal quotations.
4. Giving incorrect information about the true source of a citation.
5. The paraphrasing of a source without mentioning the source.
6. Excessive paraphrasing, even if the source is mentioned.
Practices constituting scientific fraud are as follows:
1. Fabrication, falsification or omission of data and plagiarism.
2. Duplicate publication.
3. Conflicts of authorship.
Warning
Any breach of these Rules shall constitute a ground for rejection of the manuscript submitted.