MATTHEWS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT 23 JOINT DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGES Sir John FREELAND AND JUNGWIERT 1. We voted against the finding of a breach of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, essentially for the following reasons. 2. In the first place, and as a general point, the view has throughout weighed heavily with us that a particular restraint should be required of the Court when it is invited, as it is here, to pronounce on acts of the European Community or consequent to its requirements, especially when those acts relate to a matter so intimately concerned with the operation of the Community as elections to one of its constitutional organs. 3. Secondly, as to the interpretation to be given to Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, we have considered that the view taken in the Commission, by the substantial majority of eleven votes to six, that “the role of Article 3 is to ensure that elections take place at regular intervals to the national or local legislative assembly” has much to commend it. It is, as reference to the travaux préparatoires confirms, a view squarely within the intention of the drafters (who, it should be recalled, were working at a time when about half the countries of Europe – including some in Western Europe – were deprived of free elections). Further, by confining the ambit of the provision to bodies within the domestic area and excluding any supranational representative organ, it avoids the uncertainty and invidiousness involved in analysis by an outside body of the characteristics of such an organ, which as experience has shown are likely to be neither straightforward nor static. 4. If, however, it is justifiable, on the familiar basis that “the Convention is a living instrument which must be interpreted in the light of present-day conditions”, to include within the scope of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 a body which was plainly not within the contemplation of the drafters, if only because no such body existed at the time, it becomes necessary to consider whether the body concerned is properly to be regarded as “the legislature” (emphasis supplied) within the meaning of the provision. That question may require, in turn, two others. First, is the body a legislature at all? And, secondly, if it is, is it the legislature for the State or territory in question – in this case, Gibraltar?