On 20 September 1967, Denmark, Norway and Sweden filed an application against the Greek government, accusing it of violating articles 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and a few days later, on 27 September 1967, the Netherlands filed a new application against Greece.
The applicant governments, among other things, accused the Greek government of suspending a number of provisions of the Constitution of 1952, banning political parties and suspending the elections scheduled for 28 May 1967, establishing extraordinary military tribunals, arbitrarily imprisoning dissidents, censoring the press, and restricting freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association, arguing that the Greek government’s invoking of a public emergency threatening the life of the nation in the derogation declaration it submitted to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, pursuant to article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights, did not satisfy the requirements of article 15.
In its first decision on the admissibility of the application, on 24 January 1968, the Commission ruled that the applications were acceptable, rejecting the claim that the actions by which a revolutionary government, such as the one that resulted from the coup of 21 April 1967, maintains itself in power could not be subject to control, and judging that the concurrent examination of the Greek case by the political organs of the Council of Europe did not constitute an obstacle to the exercise of its competence.