## Facts

- Julia Glasenapp, a German national, was appointed in 1974 as a probationary civil servant (trainee secondary-school teacher) in North Rhine-Westphalia, where civil servants were required to show loyalty to the “free democratic constitutional order.”
- During her probationary period, she publicly expressed support for policies associated with the German Communist Party (KPD), including distributing a statement within her school and to the press; the statement later appeared in a KPD publication.
- Education authorities treated the KPD as pursuing objectives incompatible with the democratic constitutional order and asked Glasenapp to distance herself from those objectives; she did not provide assurances.
- In January 1975, the authorities revoked her probationary appointment on the ground that her conduct showed insufficient loyalty to the constitutional order.
- German administrative courts upheld the revocation, accepting that advocacy of the KPD’s communist objectives was incompatible with the loyalty expected of civil servants.
- Glasenapp complained under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, alleging the revocation violated her freedom of expression.

## Issues

1. Whether revocation of a probationary civil-service appointment based on an applicant’s expressed political views constituted an interference with freedom of expression under Article 10.
2. Whether Article 10 (or the Convention generally) confers a right of access to, or continued employment in, the civil service.
3. If Article 10 applied, whether the measure was justified under Article 10(2) as necessary in a democratic society for legitimate aims.

## Decision

- The court found no violation of Article 10.
- It held that the Convention, including Article 10, does not guarantee a right of access to employment in the public service.
- The case was characterized as involving eligibility conditions for civil-service status (including loyalty requirements), rather than a sanction imposed for the exercise of expression.
- Because the complaint fell outside Article 10’s scope in this context, the court did not proceed to a full justification analysis under Article 10(2).

## Legal Principles

- The Convention does not, as such, provide a general right of access to the civil service; contracting states may set conditions for entry and retention in public-service positions.
- Where civil-service employment is conditioned on commitment to fundamental values of a democratic constitutional system, expression of political convictions conflicting with those values may be treated as evidence the applicant does not meet a required personal qualification.
- Whether Article 10 is engaged depends on the nature of the measure: denial or revocation of a public-law status for failure to meet eligibility conditions may be distinguished from punitive restrictions on expression.
- For exhaustion of domestic remedies, it is generally sufficient that the substance of the Convention complaint was raised domestically; formal invocation of the Convention is not necessarily required.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Germany’s revocation of a probationary teacher’s civil-service appointment based on a constitutional-loyalty requirement, concluding that Article 10 does not secure access to public employment and that the decision concerned eligibility for civil-service status rather than an actionable interference with freedom of expression.


Glasenapp v. Ger., 9 Eur. H.R. Rep. 25 (Eur. Ct. H.R. 1986)