In the matter at hand the aforementioned conditions for restricting the right to be elected have not been respected, in light of the fact that a) there was no clear legal basis for concluding on ineligibility of the candidates; b) the candidacies had been validated before the elections; c) no final decision of courts had been reached on the criminal charges against the six mayoral candidates; and d) the ground for ineligibility invoked ex post by the SEC had been the prohibition from public service by decree law: the Venice Commission and a number of other bodies had also expressed serious concerns about the dismissals of civil servants through the emergency decree laws, which also formed the basis for their life-long prohibition from public service.