135.  The applicants also complained that they did not have effective domestic remedies for their Article 3 complaints, in breach of Article 13. In this connection, the Court repeats its above finding that civil and administrative law remedies were available to the applicants had they wished to complain about their conditions of detention. As for the more fundamental aspect of the complaints, that the very nature of the detention scheme in Part 4 of the 2001 Act gave rise to a breach of Article 3, the Court reiterates that Article 13 does not guarantee a remedy allowing a challenge to primary legislation before a  <mask> on the ground of being contrary to the Convention (see James and Others v. the United Kingdom, 21 February 1986, § 85, Series A no. 98, and Roche v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 32555/96, § 137, ECHR 2005-X).


110.  The Government submitted that the exemption of persons who have held high office from the pensions cap did not amount to  <mask>, for the reasons set out in the decision of the Commission for Protection Against Discrimination of 17 September 2009 (see paragraph 60 above). In any event, that exemption did not directly affect the applicants because they would not benefit from its cancellation. The different treatment accorded to persons who have held high office was justified by the nature of their duties, which were closely related to the country’s government. Only persons who had held one of a small number of very high posts were exempted from the cap; all of them had been barred by law from taking up additional employment. Nor could it be said that the cap was discriminatory vis-à-vis other pensioners whose pensions fell below it.


107.  The applicants alleged a violation of Article 14 in conjunction with Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention in that the authorities failed in their duty to investigate and prosecute a racially motivated violent offence. They referred, inter alia, to their Roma origin, the alleged widespread prejudices against their ethnic group and the authorities' consistent failure to address systematic patterns of violence and  <mask> against their community.


36.  The applicant complained of a violation of her right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time and also that she had been a victim of  <mask> on grounds of sex. She further alleged that she had been unable to obtain redress for the violation of her fundamental right as acknowledged by the Constitutional Court. She relied on Articles 6 § 1 and 14 of the Convention, which read as follows:


122.  The Government further submitted that any attempt to characterise the  <mask> as particularly acute in the case of Northern Irish Catholics was wholly misconceived. First, any historical discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland was not relevant to the Certificate of Approval scheme or any violation arising from it. Secondly, as there was no Anglican Church in Northern Ireland, no church there was exempt from the scheme.


19.  The applicant complained that the fact that he was not exempt from military service or alternative civilian service, while assuming a function within the Federation of Evangelical Communities in Austria (Bund Evangelikaler Gemeinden in Österreich) which was comparable to those of members of recognised religious societies who were exempt from such service, constituted  <mask> on the ground of his religion, as prohibited by Article 14 of the Convention taken together with Article 9.


123.  The applicants submitted that, on account of their ethnicity, they had been victims of  <mask> by judicial bodies and officials. Moreover, the first applicant argued that the failure of the domestic courts to provide reasons for the difference in non-pecuniary damage awarded to the three widows had amounted to discrimination contrary to Article 14 of the Convention, which provides as follows:


26.  The applicant argued that it was unjust for the Government now to seek to rely on a point that they had agreed not to advance during the domestic proceedings, during which they had conceded it was irrelevant to the issues of principle at stake. She objected strenuously to the attempt to re-introduce the issue before the Court. The applicant further argued that the notion of victim under Article 34 of the Convention was without reference to detriment, prejudice or damage. This was a matter for consideration under Article 41, in the event of the Court holding that there had been a violation of Convention rights. Even supposing that the material disadvantage in her case had ultimately been reduced – which she did not concede – she argued that the basis for her complaint was that the child support system offended her dignity by ignoring a most important and intimate aspect of her private life and personality. This was not excused or justified by the operation of a mechanism that was entirely unconnected to the alleged  <mask>.


46.  The applicants complain of  <mask> of the facts of the conditions of their schooling during the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years: they had been schooled in a school situated in a prefabricated building, attended only by children of their community and offering an inferior level of study to that of other students. They enounce a violation of Article 14 of the Convention in conjunction with Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 of the Convention. These provisions are as follows:


29.  The applicant maintained that, contrary to the Government’s submission, the underlying ground of  <mask> was nationality even if the official ground was immigration status, and pointed out, with reference to the Court’s judgment in Gaygusuz v. Austria (16 September 1996, § 42, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996‑IV), that very weighty reasons were required to justify such discrimination. In support of the contention that the ground of discrimination was nationality, the applicant cited the case of Westminster City Council v. Morris (see paragraphs 15-18 above), in which the majority of the Court of Appeal had found, at paragraphs 52 and 82 of the judgment, that nationality was the underlying ground on which the distinction was drawn. The applicant submitted that the Court should accept the reasoning of the Court of Appeal as determinative.


35.  The applicant claimed that by depriving him of the possibility of joining the farmers' scheme solely on account of his foreign nationality, despite the fact that he met the other statutory conditions, the authorities had violated the prohibition of  <mask>. As a result he was effectively deprived of social security cover in the event of sickness, occupational injury and invalidity. Furthermore, he could not continue making contributions towards his retirement pension, which he had paid for many years when affiliated to the general social security scheme. In this connection, the applicant had a reasonable expectation of being admitted to the farmers' scheme. That position was supported by the Ombudsman's opinion in his case.


89.  The Government submitted that the German courts had not discriminated against the applicant on account of her transsexuality. Any person arguing that the costs of surgical operations should be borne by a health insurance company had to show a valid claim and, in the case of a dispute, adduce relevant evidence. In respect of the medical treatment of transsexuals, evidence had to be furnished for this sexual orientation and the reasons therefor. The need to determine whether or not a disease had been deliberately caused applied to all insured persons. For a transsexual, hormone treatment was relevant circumstantial evidence. The Court of Appeal’s evaluation and assessment of evidence did not disclose any  <mask>.


38.  The Government argued that Article 14 was inapplicable as the facts of the case did not disclose any appreciable impact on either her relationship with her children, or her relationship with her partner. In order for Article 14 to apply, it must be shown that the specific factual context in which the allegation of  <mask> arises was within the ambit of one of the substantive rights of the Convention. The intended limited scope of Article 14 of the Convention stood in contrast to that of Article 1 of Protocol No. 12, which the United Kingdom had not ratified. If the criteria for the applicability of Article 14 were to be loosened and widened, it would occupy more and more of the area intended to be covered by the other provision. Instead, Article 14 should be kept within boundaries of application closely associated with and bearing directly upon the operation of other Convention rights. The Government contended that the approach taken by Lords Walker, Bingham and Nicholls to the applicability of Article 14 was consistent with the Strasbourg jurisprudence, and was now accepted by the domestic courts as providing a practical framework for determining when a given situation came within the ambit of Article 8 of the Convention. While the applicant had likened her situation to that at issue in the case of Petrovic v. Austria (27 March 1998, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998‑II), hers was quite different. In Petrovic, the Court had found that the parental leave allowance necessarily affected the way in which family life was organised, as it allowed one parent to stay at home to look after the children (§ 27). In contrast, the application of the formula in the MASC regulations was not intended to deter the applicant from pursuing her relationship, nor did it have that effect. The mere fact that liability to contribute towards the cost of her children's upbringing might have some effect on the financial situation of her new household was insufficient. Otherwise any financial liability, or benefit, would be deemed as coming within the ambit of the family life aspect of Article 8. Since the Convention did not confer a right to full protection of private or family life against all interference, but a right to respect for private or family life, it followed that a significant threshold of intrusion had to be crossed before there could be an interference that called for justification under Article 8 § 2. The Government drew a comparison with a number of cases in which applicants who had lost their employment had complained of interferences with their right to respect for private life: Smith and Grady v. the United Kingdom, nos. 33985/96 and 33986/96, ECHR 1999‑VI; Sidabras and Džiautas v. Lithuania, nos. 55480/00 and 59330/00, ECHR 2004‑VIII; Rainys and Gasparavičius v. Lithuania, nos. 70665/01 and 74345/01, 7 April 2005. In each of these cases, the applicants had been able to point to additional restrictions or intrusions. This strongly suggested that the merely incidental effect of the MASC regulations on the finances of the applicant's household was not sufficient to bring the situation within the scope or ambit of Article 8. The facts of this case were very remote from any identifiable impact on the applicant's family life.


61.  The applicants, Mr Richard and Mr Walsh, argued that they were entitled to compensation for the discriminatory refusal to grant them WBA, in the amount that they would have received had they been widows, plus interest. They cited in their support three cases where the Court had awarded compensation for the wrongful levying of taxes or refusal of a tax allowance (S.A. Dangeville v. France, no. 36677/97, ECHR 2002-III; Darby v. Sweden, judgment of 23 October 1990, Series A no. 187; P.M. v. the United Kingdom, no. 6638/03, 19 July 2005) and also the case of Willis, cited above. They submitted that the Court’s approach in these cases complied with the principle of restitutio in integrum and also encouraged compliance with the Convention, since there would be less incentive for States to avoid  <mask> if they were not required to pay compensation.


57.  The Government submitted that the applicant could not be considered a “victim” for the purposes of Article 34 of the Convention because he had not suffered  <mask> on the ground of his sexual orientation. In particular, he had not demonstrated that he had indeed been treated less favourably than other persons in an analogous situation. The domestic courts had based their decisions on the objective prerequisite, namely the fact that the applicant had not met the basic condition laid down in section 8(1) of the 1994 Act since he had not resided permanently with the statutory tenant until his death. The same condition – which, as such, could not be regarded as unreasonable or unjustified – would have been applied to all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation.


36.  The applicant complained that the fact that he was not exempt from military service while assuming a function with the Jehovah’s Witnesses which was comparable to those of members of recognised religious societies who were exempt from military service constituted  <mask> on the ground of his religion, prohibited by Article 14 of the Convention taken together with Article 4.


18.  The applicants submitted that while their older siblings’ claims for compensation in connection with their sister’s death had been allowed, their similar claims had been dismissed by the court of last resort on the ground of their young age at the time of the accident (see paragraph 13 above). They claimed that the distinction made by the court of last resort between their claims and those of their older siblings had amounted to  <mask> prohibited by Article 14 of the Convention and caused them substantial loss.


86.  The Government observed that the applicant had become liable to the payment of a fine because he had chosen to ignore his summons for jury service. He had not complained of an unfair trial or of a lack of independence or impartiality of the domestic tribunal. Nor had he complained that the situation would have been different if he had been a woman. Therefore, no  <mask> on the ground of sex could be disclosed.


73.  The applicants mainly complained that the authorities had failed to take the requisite measures in compliance with their obligations under national law and the Convention to ensure that the first applicant’s physical integrity and dignity were respected at school and that he enjoyed the right to quality education without  <mask>. They relied on Articles 3, 8, 13 and 14 of the Convention, on Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention and on Article 1 of Protocol No. 12 to the Convention.


37.  The applicant claimed that the reduction in her pension under the General Old Age Pensions Act constituted  <mask> on the ground of sex prohibited by Article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, in that at the relevant time a married woman was only insured under the Act for periods when her husband was insured, whereas there was no equivalent rule for married men.


43.  The Government submitted that the applicant's complaint based on  <mask> contrary to Article 14 was ill-founded. They pointed out that the distinction made, prior to the 1998 Act, between nationals and foreigners when awarding the allowance for disabled adults pursued a legitimate aim, which was a balance between the State's welfare income and expenditure. The requirement of proportionality had also been satisfied, as foreign nationals had not been deprived of all resources since they were entitled to, among other things, the RMI. The Government also pointed out that, although the applicant had been unable to acquire French nationality by declaration, he could have requested his naturalisation and benefited from the allowance for disabled adults without being disqualified by the nationality condition.


130.  The applicants observed in particular that in explaining why it had refused to shift the burden of proof in Nachova and Others (cited above, § 157) the Court had been careful to distinguish between racially-motivated violent crime and non-violent acts of racial  <mask> in, for example, employment or the provision of services. In their submission, racial discrimination in access to education fell precisely in the latter category of discriminatory acts which could be proved in the absence of intent. More recently, the Court had ruled in Zarb Adami v. Malta (no. 17209/02, §§ 75‑76, ECHR 2006-VIII) that a difference in treatment did not need to be set forth in legislative text in order to breach Article 14 and that a “well-established practice” or “de facto situation” could also give rise to discrimination. As, in the instant case, the applicants considered that they had indisputably succeeded in establishing the existence of a disproportionate impact, the burden of proof had to shift to the Government to prove that the applicants’ ethnic origin had had no bearing on the impugned decisions and that sufficient safeguards against discrimination were in place.


80.  The applicant further argued that the ban on wearing clothing designed to conceal the face in public, which undoubtedly targeted the burqa, generated  <mask> in breach of Article 14 of the Convention on grounds of sex, religion and ethnic origin, to the detriment of Muslim women who, like her, wore the full-face veil. In her view this was indirect discrimination between Muslim women whose beliefs required them to wear the full-face veil and other Muslim women, and also between them and Muslim men. The exception provided for by the Law of 11 October 2010, according to which the ban did not apply if the clothing was worn in the context of “festivities or artistic or traditional events” was also, in her view, discriminatory, in that it created an advantage for the Christian majority: it allowed Christians to wear in public clothing that concealed their face in the context of Christian festivities or celebrations (Catholic religious processions, carnivals or rituals, such as dressing up as Santa Claus) whereas Muslim women who wished to wear the full-face veil in public remained bound by the ban even during the month of Ramadan.


43.   The applicant contested this view and maintained that if the relevant domestic legislation provided for exemptions from military or alternative civilian service, it should do so without any  <mask>. During the time of his civilian service he had had to work forty hours a week, and thus had been unable to perform his functions as a deacon and preacher and had had to limit the practice of his religion to his spare time.


24.  The applicant submitted that “very weighty reasons” had to be provided to justify sex  <mask> and that the more lenient test under Article 1 of Protocol 1, whereby only measures “manifestly without reasonable foundation” were challengeable, did not apply in such cases. There was no reason why he should have to pay towards the NHS for a longer period than women, which obligation had no objective connection with the state pension age. The recent increase in deductions from the NI Fund for NHS funding purposes was manipulating NICs as a general taxation source which aggravated the existing inequality. As the NI Fund was not in fact self-financing but could be topped up by money from general taxation, it could not be said that changes in contributions would prejudice the equilibrium of the scheme. If women were required to pay, it would in fact boost the amount of funds. Any differences in entitlement were a consequence only of the way in which the Government had chosen to structure the benefit system.


81.  The applicant association submitted that it had sustained considerable non-pecuniary damage because, for nine years, the national authorities had regarded it and presented it to the public as an apologist for terrorism. It assessed this damage at FRF 100,000. As to the damage arising from the excessive length of the proceedings, the association assessed this at FRF 100,000. Lastly, the fact that it had suffered  <mask> on grounds of its national origin and language amounted to a specific grievance causing it non-pecuniary damage amounting to FRF 100,000.


72.  The applicant complained that the statutory ban on wearing clothing designed to conceal the face in public deprived her of the possibility of wearing the Islamic full-face veil in public places. She alleged that there had been a violation of her right to freedom of association and  <mask> in the exercise of that right. She relied on Article 11 of the Convention, taken separately and together with the above-cited Article 14. Article 11 reads as follows:


51.  The Government further submitted that in 2004 the Music Academy had had neither the infrastructure (in terms of resources, equipment and teaching staff) for students with disabilities nor any regulations on matters relating to disability. As regards the allegation that the applicant had suffered discriminatory treatment, the Government pointed out that  <mask> meant treating differently, without an objective and reasonable justification, persons in similar situations. “No objective and reasonable justification” meant that the distinction in issue did not pursue a legitimate aim or that there was not a reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means employed and the aim sought to be realised (see Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia-Herzegovina [GC], nos. 27996/06 and 34836/06, § 42, ECHR 2009, and Ali v. the United Kingdom, no. 40385/06, § 53, 11 January 2011). They also cited the case-law of the Court regarding the margin of appreciation enjoyed by States (see Andrejeva v. Latvia [GC], no. 55707/00, § 82, ECHR 2009). The Government concluded by stating that they were well informed of the Court’s case-law relating to the applicant’s complaints and that they respected the Court’s decision to intervene.


131.  The Government submitted that there was no evidence whatsoever to support the applicant's allegation that her husband was killed by State agents. According to the Government, the Ekinci family is a well-known family in Turkey. Its members are wealthy and have close connections with high-ranking officials. The situation of the Ekinci family serves to contradict the allegation that persons of Kurdish origin are victims of  <mask>.


43.  The Government first argued that the applicant churches had failed to exhaust domestic remedies. They submitted, in particular, that the applicant churches could have brought a civil action for mandatory conclusion of a contract under section 248 of the Obligations Act, an action for the protection of rights of personality under section 1048 of the same Act (see paragraph 33 above), or an action under the Anti- <mask> Act (see paragraph 36 above).


88.  The Government contended that the applicant's complaint was unfounded and completely unsubstantiated. They noted that the applicant had had a very good working relationship with the other employees at the School and that she had not had any criticism of her work, a fact which they considered could not be reconciled with her complaint of  <mask>. The Government reiterated their argument that the applicant's dismissal was the result of the elimination of certain deficiencies in the administration of the School.


45.  The applicant submitted that the Government did not deny that the pension rules in force at the relevant time discriminated against married women and considered that there was no reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means employed and the aim sought to be realised, namely to avoid the undesirable accumulation of pension rights. In the applicant's opinion other legislation could have been brought in. As to the point in time when social attitudes had changed, the applicant argued that even in 1957 the principle of equality and the resulting prohibition on  <mask> were a general principle of both national and international law. In that connection, she referred to Article 1 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stated that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. She further referred, inter alia, to Article 14 of the Convention (1950), the Netherlands Act of 14 June 1956 abolishing the legal incapacity of married women, and Article 12 § 4 of the European Social Charter (1961), by which the Contracting States undertook to ensure equal treatment of their own nationals with nationals of other Contracting Parties in respect of social-security rights. The applicant was of the opinion that there were no weighty reasons to confront a small group of women, who did not fall within the scope of Directive 79/7/EEC, for the rest of their lives with the consequences of a discriminatory provision from the past that had been abolished in the meantime.


39.  The applicant further complained that in denying her the right to stand as a candidate in the parliamentary elections for the sole reason that she did not have a command of Latvian at the highest level defined by the domestic regulations the Latvian authorities had caused her to suffer  <mask> prohibited by Article 14 of the Convention in the exercise of her right under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1. The relevant parts of Article 14 provide:


13.  The applicant complained that the United Kingdom authorities’ refusal to pay him the social security and tax benefits to which he would have been entitled had he been a woman in a similar position, namely Widow’s Payment (“Wpt”), Widowed Mother’s Allowance (“WMA”), Widow’s Bereavement Allowance (“WBA”) and Widow’s Pension (“WP”) constituted  <mask> against him on grounds of sex contrary to Article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and/or Article 8.


375.  The applicants submitted that, even assuming that the relationships between the prospective adoptive parents and the children did not constitute “family life” or “private life” within the meaning of Article 8, they still fell within the ambit of Article 8 for the purposes of Article 14. In their view, having adopted the Bilateral Agreement on Adoption, Russia provided rights extending beyond those expressly guaranteed by the Convention. The Court held that the protection from  <mask> enshrined in Article 14 extended to such additional rights, in particular in the context of adoption (see E.B. v. France [GC], no. 43546/02, §§ 47-51, 22 January 2008). The applicants contested the Government’s argument that the cases at hand were substantially different from E.B., cited above, and Fretté, cited above. They maintained that both E.B. and Fretté related to discrimination in the matter of adoption, and the fact that they concerned discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation whilst the present cases concerned discrimination on grounds of nationality was immaterial, since the latter was likewise prohibited by the Convention (see Gaygusuz v. Austria, 16 September 1996, § 42, Reports 1996‑IV). Accordingly, the present cases fell within the ambit of Article 8 for the purposes of Article 14.


26.  The applicant first of all submitted that he had compensated for any shortcomings in such essential subjects as mathematics and literature by having private lessons throughout his high-school years. On leaving his vocational high school not only had he had a sound command of mathematics and the technical and social sciences, but also he had assimilated elementary knowledge of communication techniques. In his view, this had enabled him to obtain marks which were as good as, if not better than, those achieved by students from ordinary high schools in the national university entrance examination. Despite these results, however, he had been refused entrance to university. The applicant attributed this failure to the 0.2 weighting on his average high school marks – which was applied in calculating the final marks in the examination – whereas the weighting on average marks for students from ordinary high schools was 0.5, which, in his view, had put him at a clear disadvantage. He claimed that years of effort had thus been wiped out by what he described as negative  <mask> against students from vocational high schools.


41.  The applicant rejected that argument. In her submission, the way in which such a verification was carried out and the almost total freedom enjoyed by the examiner made it easy to strike out of the list any person whose mother tongue was not Latvian. As a result, a truly discriminatory practice vis-à-vis members of national minorities was to be feared. The applicant further observed that of the twenty-one candidates who had not been educated in Latvian only nine, including her, had been required to take the above-mentioned test. In that connection, she presumed the existence of covert  <mask>.


60.  The Government also argued that the third party’s submissions were general and vague (see paragraphs 61-62 below). They submitted that Roma in Montenegro were protected by the Constitution, which incorporated all international legal standards, and a number of statutes, including the  <mask> Prohibition Act, and the Minority Rights and Freedoms Act. Montenegro had also adopted a “Strategy for improving the situation of Roma and Egyptians 2012-2016”, which defined a whole set of legal, political, economic, social, health and other measures and activities, and whose implementation was monitored by a commission composed also of representatives of Roma, Egyptians and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for such groups. The Government further maintained that Montenegro had worked on improving the living standards of Roma, particularly their living conditions, by building a number of residential units in several towns.


51.  The applicant argued that according to the Court's case-law, a difference in treatment based on sexual orientation required very weighty reasons if it was to be accepted as compatible with the Convention. The Government had not been able to point to any legitimate aim served by the different treatment of same-sex couples. The reasoning of the majority in the House of Lords did not constitute an objective justification for the purposes of the Convention. The fact that it took much time and effort to draft, discuss and implement the Civil Partnership Act could not justify the previous discriminatory situation. The applicant also criticised the Government's reliance on the Mata Estevez decision. In her view, this had been superseded by the Court's judgment in Karner, which should be treated as a statement of general principle applicable to any comparisons between heterosexual and homosexual couples in analogous circumstances. Moreover, as that case arose out of a judgment of the Austrian Supreme Court of 1996, and since the Court did not attach any temporal limitation to the effects of its reasoning, it followed that equal treatment should have been secured as of that date. The applicant rejected the Government's argument that she could not complain of just one element of the child support system. Such an argument was repugnant to any modern equality law paradigm. The mere fact that, at the relevant time, the situation of heterosexual couples was subject to different principles did not explain why no comparison between the two groups was possible. Rather, the difference existed because of  <mask>, and so could not be relied upon by the Government to defeat the applicant's claim.


24.  The applicant argued that the refusal to give him a retirement pension violated the principle of non- <mask> enshrined in Article 14 of the Convention combined with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. He considered that the domestic legislation discriminated against Evangelical ministers compared with Catholic priests, who had been admitted to the general Social Security scheme much earlier. Also, when Evangelical ministers were eventually admitted to the general Social Security scheme, unlike Catholic priests they were not given the possibility of using their previous years of service as ministers to make up the minimum period of contribution required to qualify for a retirement pension.


51.  The applicant also complained that the United Kingdom authorities' refusal to pay him the widow's payment and widowed mother's allowance to which he would have been entitled had he been a woman in a similar position constituted  <mask> on grounds of sex contrary to Article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 8. He made an identical complaint as regards his future non-entitlement to a widow's pension.


78.  The Government submitted that no breach of Article 14 could be found in the absence of an interference with Article 8. Moreover, the applicants had not established on which ground covered by the Convention they claimed to be suffering  <mask>. Furthermore, the applicants had not been identified as being in an analogous situation to any person treated differently from them. Indeed, it had not been proved that other persons living in an “inhabited area” had been given preferential treatment. In actual fact, distances of sites for letting off fireworks were always measured from areas where at least a hundred people lived.


36.  The applicants alleged that the fact that the civil unions introduced by Law no. 3719/2008 were designed only for couples composed of different-sex adults infringed their right to respect for their private and family life and amounted to unjustified  <mask> between different-sex and same-sex couples, to the detriment of the latter. They relied on Article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 8. Those provisions read as follows:


39.  The Government pointed out that in its judgment of 15 January 2007 the Constitutional Court had found in favour of the applicant and allowed her amparo appeal in respect of her complaint concerning the principle of non‑ <mask> when in fact, as her child had reached the prescribed age limit by the time the execution proceedings were pending before the Constitutional Court, the applicant was no longer entitled to the reduced working hours she had applied for. In the Government’s submission, the fact that it was materially impossible to execute the Constitutional Court’s judgment did not constitute a violation of the right to a fair hearing in this case, unlike the facts examined in the Hornsby judgment (cited above), which concerned the administrative authorities’ delay in complying with court judgments.


28.   The applicant contested this view and maintained that if the relevant domestic legislation provided for exemptions from military or alternative civilian service, it should do so without any  <mask>. During the time of his civilian service he had had to work forty hours a week and, thus, had been unable to perform his functions as a deacon and preacher and had had to limit the practice of his religion to his spare time.


13.  The applicant pointed to this aspect of the discriminatory nature of the Latvian Sentence Enforcement Code before the Constitutional Court in his third complaint. The latter, on the basis of the relevant provisions of the Law on the Constitutional Court, rejected it on the grounds that the legal reasoning in the complaint was insufficient. The majority concludes, and we can accept, that in his third complaint the applicant raised “expressly and in substance” the  <mask> complaint which he subsequently brought before this Court.[14]


62.  The applicant was unable to explain the increasing number of women registered as jurors from 1996 to 1997, but pointed out that the increase had only occurred three years after the 1994 amendments. The fact that the number of women selected as jurors was constantly growing might also be explained by the judgment given in his case by the Constitutional Court, in which a revision of the system of compiling the lists had been recommended. In any case, the  <mask> complained of had lasted for at least twenty-six years, including the year when the applicant had lodged his complaint before the national courts.


85.  The applicant complained that the ill-treatment he suffered and the refusal of the military prosecutor to indict the police officers responsible for the ill-treatment was in substantial part due to his Roma ethnicity, and therefore inconsistent with the requirement of non- <mask> laid down by Article 14 taken together with Articles 3 and 13. Article 14 of the Convention provides:


104.  The Government pointed out that only Mr Atanasov, and none of the other applicants, had brought proceedings before the Commission for Protection Against  <mask>, at the close of which the Commission had recommended to Parliament to repeal the offending statutory provisions. The Government secondly argued that the applicants could have brought a claim under section 71(1) of the Protection Against Discrimination Act and obtained an award of damages.


59.  The Government asserted that the application should be declared inadmissible as being manifestly ill-founded. They argued that on the facts of the case there was no issue of  <mask>. In particular, they submitted that the domestic courts had refused to authorise the second applicant’s adoption on the ground that his father had not consented and that it was not in the child’s interests. Consequently, the legal impossibility for a homosexual to adopt his or her partner’s child, resulting from Article 182 § 2 of the Civil Code, had not come into play. In the Government’s view, the applicants were therefore requesting the Court to review this provision in the abstract.


44.  The applicants did not deny that it had been reasonable for the respondent State to seek to address the anomaly whereby industrial injury earnings-replacement benefits continued to be paid to workers after the age when they would, in any event, have ceased paid employment. There was, however, no justification for introducing sex-based  <mask> into the scheme by linking the cut-off date to pension age. The same objective could have been achieved, without unacceptable financial consequences, by adopting a common age-limit for men and women and/or by the use of overlapping benefit regulations, ensuring that any State pension received was offset against REA. Other age-related benefits, such as winter fuel payment, prescription charges and bus passes were paid with a common age threshold.


110.  The applicants challenged the Government's claim that the complaint should be declared inadmissible on account of a failure to exhaust the domestic remedies. They argued that an action under the Protection against  <mask> Act was not a remedy that they were required to exhaust because it was neither effective nor available. The applicants noted that the Court had repeatedly held that there is no requirement that remedies that are neither adequate nor effective should be used (see, mutatis mutandis, Sakık and Others v. Turkey, judgment of 26 November 1997, Reports 1997‑VII, p. 2625, § 53) and that an individual must have clear, practical opportunity to challenge an act which is an interference with his or her rights (see De Geouffre de la Pradelle v. France, judgment of 16 December 1992, Series A no. 253‑B, p. 43, § 34 and Bellet v. France, judgment of 4 December 1995, Series A no. 333‑B, p. 42, § 36). In respect of the lack of availability of the remedy claimed by the Government, the applicants noted that the Protection against Discrimination Act entered into force close to four years after they had lodged their complaints with the Court. With regard to its effectiveness, they argued that an action for damages, be it based on anti-discrimination legislation or general tort law, could not remedy the substance of their complaint before the Court, which was that the authorities had failed to conduct an effective investigation into the death of their relative and to prosecute the perpetrators. Moreover, an action under the Act would be directed against the investigation authorities and would require the applicants to prove discriminatory treatment by them on the basis of race, of which there was no direct evidence. Thus, the applicants claimed that there was no clear link between the complaints they raised before the Court and the remedy suggested by the Government.


61.  The applicant submitted that the Court of Cassation had “had an obligation”, in the circumstances of the case, to rule the dismissal unfair on the ground of  <mask>. He considered that he had been treated less favourably than his colleagues on account of his health. If he had not contracted the virus, his colleagues would not have refused to work with him and his employer would not have dismissed him. If it were a well-established principle in Greece that an HIV-positive employee could not be dismissed, employees who harboured prejudice would know that they could not obtain a dismissal, would not disrupt the operation of the company, and would refrain from interfering in the professional and private life of the employee in question. In the present case the motives of the employees were inseparable from those of the employer and it could not be claimed that the dismissal was not discriminatory on the pretext that the employer’s motives, taken alone, constituted valid grounds for dismissal.


100.  The Government denied that the scheme involved any  <mask> on the grounds of nationality or poverty. Any discrimination on the ground of nationality was justified by reference to the legitimate objective of immigration control. Moreover, insofar as the level of the fee was alleged to be too high, that issue ought to be considered under Article 12 and not under Article 14.


69.  The applicant complained that, since the wearing in public of clothing designed to conceal the face was prohibited by law on pain of a criminal sanction, if she wore the full-face veil in a public place she would expose herself to a risk not only of sanctions but also of harassment and  <mask>, which would constitute degrading treatment. She relied on Article 3 of the Convention, which reads:


32.  The applicant argued that even if the  <mask> flowed from primary legislation it would nonetheless have been possible to provide some sensible intermediate form of relief and pointed to the later introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998, which provided for a declaration of incompatibility of legislation and the European Union provisions which had the effect of setting aside domestic primary legislation which conflicted with EC law.


35.  The applicant complained that the refusal to grant her a survivor’s pension, on the ground that her marriage solemnised according to the rites of the Roma minority to which she belonged had no civil effects, infringed the principle of non- <mask> recognised by Article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. The provisions in question read as follows:


40.  The Government emphasised that there was no obligation to treat in the same manner those who had complied with the statutory formalities and those who, without being prevented from doing so, had not complied with them. The statutory requirement that there had to be a legal marital relationship for a survivor’s pension entitlement to be granted did not constitute  <mask> on racial or ethnic grounds. The refusal to grant the said pension to the applicant stemmed solely from her free and voluntary decision not to observe the statutory formalities of marriage, which were not based on the fact of belonging to a particular race, nor on the traditions, habits or customs of a particular ethnic group to the detriment of others. Those formalities did not therefore constitute direct or indirect discrimination against the Roma community.


31.  The applicant submitted that the  <mask> of widows and widowers under the amended Pension Act in fact prolongates the discrimination of widows and widowers in respect of entitlement to a survivor’s pension before 1 January 1995. He maintained that there is no reason why excessive benefits should only be prevented when paying survivor pensions to widowers but not also to widows who had acquired a survivor’s pension before 1 January 1995. He submitted that his position as a widower was just as well worth protecting than those of widows.


46.  The applicant also stated that she had provided all the requisite documents within the stipulated time-limits. The medical report presented to the Music Academy had stipulated that she could receive education in the sections of the Music Academy that did not require eyesight. She submitted that other students had been enrolled even though their medical reports had merely stated “can attend college”, “can be enrolled at university” or “can study at the Music Academy”, such that the refusal to enrol her had not been based on sound reasons but solely on the fact of her blindness, which proved that there had been  <mask>.


52.  The Government maintained that the applicant had not suffered  <mask>. In the first place, it argued that the situation of same-sex couples at the material time had not been analogous to that of heterosexual couples since the child support legislation and the wider legislative regime for social security benefits treated the groups according to fundamentally different principles for all purposes. This entailed both beneficial and detrimental effects for the two groups. It was therefore artificial and inappropriate for the applicant to isolate just one element of a much wider interlocking set of rules governing entitlement to a variety of State benefits. In many respects, the situation before the entry into force of the Civil Partnership Act had been advantageous for same-sex couples. To properly assess the applicant's situation, it would be necessary to take account of the entirety of the benefits and burdens in the system as a whole. But as soon as the wider perspective was adopted, the applicant could no longer be regarded as being in a comparable or analogous situation for the purpose of analysis under Article 14. If the applicant's arguments were to be accepted, it would follow that heterosexual couples would be able in turn to complain of any provision of the child support and State welfare system that treated them less favourably than the members of a same-sex couple. This would create a “ratchet effect” whereby in the end everyone would have to be assessed on the best possible basis that anyone might have at any stage in the calculation. This would lead to a situation where everyone would receive every available benefit, and any burden would be disregarded altogether.


111.  The applicants submitted that they were being treated differently both from pensioners who had had lower salaries and whose pensions thus fell below the cap, and from the high officials to whose pensions the cap did not apply. That difference in treatment concerned rights protected under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, and could therefore be examined under Article 14. There were no grounds to treat the applicants differently from pensioners whose pensions fell below the cap, for the same reasons as those set out in relation to the complaint under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. That differential treatment did not pursue a legitimate aim. However, even if it were to be accepted that the money saved as a result of the cap could be used to make payments to other pensioners, the effects of the measure were disproportionate. The interference with the applicants’ pension rights, which had become permanent, was quite serious, because they received only a fraction of their full pensions; at the same time, capping the pensions of only 2% of all pensioners could not have a significant effect on the pensions of others. In 2009 those arguments had led the Commission for Protection Against  <mask> to find that the cap amounted to indirect discrimination. Lastly, the applicants submitted that it was not justified to treat them differently from persons who had held high office. Like them the applicants had been subjected to restrictions regarding the taking up of new employment.


46.  The applicants’ core submission was that there was a fundamental difference in the level of justification required for a progressive move to eradicate existing sex  <mask> in the pension system and the introduction, from 1986, of new discrimination in relation to industrial injury benefits which had existed on equal terms for men and women for almost forty years. The labour market had already changed by 1986, and ten years earlier the Sex Discrimination Act 1976 and the European Community’s Equal Treatment Directive 76/207/EEC had rendered discrimination in the field of employment unlawful. The assumption that a woman’s working life would be five years shorter than a man’s was therefore entirely illegitimate.


39.  The applicant submitted that he had suffered  <mask> in the enjoyment of his rights under Article 8 on the ground of his illegitimate status and/or the sex of his Maltese parent. Indeed, had the applicant’s parents been married, he would have fallen within the parameters of section 5(2)(b) of the Maltese Citizenship Act; However, he fell outside that provision because of his illegitimacy. Moreover, had the applicant’s mother been Maltese the applicant could have obtained citizenship; he failed to do so because it was his father who was Maltese. The applicant was in an analogous situation to any other child with a Maltese father and a foreign mother and who fulfilled all the criteria of section 5(2)(b), and like them would have become a Maltese citizen had it not been for his illegitimate status. This status transpired from his birth certificate, and irrespective of whether his father had voluntarily recognised him or whether there had been a judicial determination to that effect, he was not eligible for citizenship owing to his status.


62.  The applicants contended that Article 57 of the Russian Criminal Code established a sentencing policy which differentiated on the basis of sex and age with regard to life imprisonment. The Court notes that “sex” is explicitly mentioned in Article 14 as a prohibited ground of  <mask> and that it has previously accepted that “age” is also a concept covered by this provision (see Schwizgebel v. Switzerland, no. 25762/07, § 85, ECHR 2010 (extracts), and Nelson, cited above).


105.  The applicants observed that the Commission’s recommendation was not binding for Parliament. Even if Parliament chose to act on it and repeal the impugned provisions, that would not provide the applicants with any redress in respect of past losses. As for the possibility to bring a claim under the Protection Against  <mask> Act, it had to be borne in mind that under section 74(2), where the alleged damage was a result of actions or omissions of State bodies, those concerned had to bring proceedings under the State Responsibility for Damage Act, which did not envisage the liability of Parliament. It was therefore not possible to pursue such a claim with success.


183.  The applicants’ allegation in the present case is not that they were in a different situation from non-Roma children that called for different treatment or that the respondent State had failed to take affirmative action to correct factual inequalities or differences between them (see Thlimmenos, cited above, § 44, and Stec and Others, cited above, § 51). In their submission, all that has to be established is that, without objective and reasonable justification, they were treated less favourably than non-Roma children in a comparable situation and that this amounted in their case to indirect  <mask>.


86.  The applicant pointed out that both the child’s mother and the legal father were entitled to challenge paternity notwithstanding the existence of a social and family relationship between the child and the legal father. According to the applicant, there were no relevant reasons which justified such different treatment. This  <mask> was further exacerbated by the fact that the growing intensity of the social and family relationship between the legal father and the child during the paternity proceedings had not impaired the mother’s right to contest paternity. Furthermore, it had to be borne in mind that children, when challenging paternity, did not have to take into account their own social relationship with their mother and legal father. By contrast, the biological father was precluded from challenging paternity even if this would serve the child’s best interests.


95.  The applicant also claimed EUR 6,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage for the emotional pain and suffering caused by the violation of her rights under Articles 9 and 14 of the Convention. She stressed that as a result of the actions of the School's authorities she had been discriminated against on the basis of her religious beliefs and that the domestic courts had failed to provide redress for her complaints. In addition, the applicant claimed that, on account of the accompanying media campaigns during the period, she had also suffered significant public prejudice. Accordingly, she had been unable to find employment for a considerable length of time and had had to start work as a self-employed trader at an open-air market. Lastly, the applicant argued that the domestic courts' refusal to examine in substance her  <mask> complaint had further contributed to her feeling of distress and helplessness, and had increased her emotional suffering.


23.  The applicant argued that there was a “right” under domestic law to be free from sex  <mask>, as evidenced by her first successful claim against the Embassy. Sovereign immunity did not extinguish the right but simply prevented the courts from examining disputes thereon. Moreover, the right was “civil”. The posts for which she had applied did not fall within the scope of the Pellegrin exception. They were of a strictly administrative or secretarial character and they would neither have required nor enabled her to wield a portion of the State’s sovereign power.


118.  The Government submitted that the decision to grant a residence order in respect of the second applicant in favour of the mother had been based on the best interests of the child. There had therefore been no  <mask>. The Government referred to the case of Tiemann v. France and Germany ((dec.), nos. 47457/99 and 47458/99, 27 April 2000) where the decisions to grant a residence order to the mother had been found to be in the bests interests of the children and therefore compatible with Article 8 of the Convention. Like in Tiemann, the first applicant in the present case had been trying to separate the second applicant from his mother. In such circumstances the domestic courts had achieved a balance between the interests of the first applicant, the second applicant and M., in particular by granting the first applicant contact rights. Despite the fact that the second applicant lived in another town, the first applicant could still visit him and maintain contact by other means.


28.  The applicant complained under Article 8 of the Convention that the court decisions refusing joint custody had infringed his right to respect for his family life, and under Article 14 read in conjunction with Article 8 of the Convention that the application of Article 1626a § 2 of the Civil Code amounted to unjustified  <mask> against unmarried fathers on the grounds of sex and in comparison with divorced fathers.


25.  The applicant, who owns land included in the hunting grounds of an approved municipal hunters’ association, complained of the fact that, as he was not opposed to hunting for ethical reasons and the surface area of his land fell below a certain threshold, he was unable to have the land removed from the association’s hunting grounds in order to derive benefit from it by leasing it for hunting. He alleged  <mask> on the ground of property, relying on Article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. These two provisions read as follows:


64.  The applicant company submitted that by adopting the administrative circular abandoning proceedings against companies that had not paid the VAT, the authorities had been guilty of  <mask> by giving those who had defaulted on their tax an advantage over law-abiding taxpayers; that discrimination had been compounded by the authorities' failure to take action to refund the sums which the law-abiding taxpayers had paid in error.


39.  The Government considered that the applicant's arguments to the effect that the difference of treatment of same-sex couples was demonstrative of a lack of respect by the State for a most intimate aspect of private life, and that it exerted a coercive effect on her freedom to make decisions about her sexual orientation, were theoretical constructs rather than factual observations. The implication of these arguments would be that any difference in treatment referable in any way to sexual orientation would engage Article 14 even in the absence of a link to substantive Convention rights. The correct approach was to have regard to the real factual implications of the circumstances of each given case and take account of how remote the facts were from the core value of the substantive right at issue. Here there was no discernible impact on the applicant's private life. She was effectively inviting the Court to dispense with any ambit threshold and establish a free-standing prohibition on  <mask> on grounds of sexual orientation.


36.  The Government contended that the application was inadmissible, since the complaint fell outside the scope of Article 8 of the Convention and, consequently, Article 14. In any event, unlike in Fretté (Fretté v. France, no. 36515/97, § 32, ECHR 2002-I), the refusal to grant the applicant authorisation had not been based, explicitly or implicitly, on the applicant's sexual orientation and could not therefore amount to direct or indirect  <mask> based on her homosexuality.


98.  The Government submitted, in the alternative, that the two categories were not in the same situation. Where the disability had been directly caused by medical negligence, the negligence preceded the disability, was the cause of it and was therefore the original source of the prejudice sustained by the parents through the birth of a disabled child. In the applicants’ case, the negligence had not been the direct cause of the disability, which already existed. The only prejudice it had occasioned lay in not having an abortion, or in not having the possibility of aborting. As the causal links between the medical negligence and the disability were different in the two cases, they – rightly, in the Government’s opinion – formed the rationale for two different sets of liability rules. It could not therefore be concluded that there had been  <mask> since the situations were not the same.


69.  The Government submitted that, in accordance with the Italo-Swiss Convention, the INPS paid out pensions after taking into consideration the working period in Switzerland and contributions paid there, in order to avoid the above-mentioned advantage. In the case of individuals who had not contested the amounts paid by the INPS, the latter was the final decision in respect of the amount of pension. Those who opted to contest that amount could only hope for a favourable outcome. However, the practical effects of Law 296/2006 were that the judicial decisions of the pending proceedings confirmed the original amount awarded by the INPS. Thus, there had been no  <mask>, particularly because Law 296/2006 aimed to establish a homogenous situation while eliminating unjustified privileges for persons who had worked abroad. In the Government’s subsequent observations, referring to a report prepared by the INPS, they submitted that any favourable treatment enjoyed by persons whose pensions had already been liquidated was an inevitable situation, in view of the necessity of the Government to regulate possessions in the general interest.


25.  The applicant complained that the fact that he was not exempt from military service while assuming a function with the Jehovah’s Witnesses which was comparable to those of members of recognised religious societies who were exempt from military service constituted  <mask> on the ground of his religion, prohibited by Article 14 of the Convention taken together with Article 9.


30.  The Government referred to paragraph 53 of the Stec and Others v. the United Kingdom judgment ([GC], no. 65731/01, ECHR 2006‑VI) and did not dispute the fact that if a State decided to set up a benefits or pension scheme it must do so in a manner compatible with Article 14 of the Convention. They noted, however, that the ministers of the various churches had been brought into the Social Security scheme at different moments in time for practical reasons and not through  <mask>, and they pointed out, citing the Stec judgment (cited above, § 49), that the State enjoyed a broad margin of appreciation in such matters. The Government further noted that the inclusion of the ministers of the different faiths in the Social Security scheme was possible only if there existed a prior agreement with the State, under which the faith concerned took on certain obligations vis-à-vis the State; they referred to Royal Decree 369/1999 (see paragraph 23 above).


39.  The applicants also complained that the loss of their former jobs and the subsequent employment restrictions under Article 2 of the Act also breached Article 10 of the Convention (which guarantees freedom of expression), and constituted  <mask> in breach of Article 14 of the Convention. The Court observes however that in the Sidabras and Džiautas case it found no scope for the application of Article 10 of the Convention, either alone or taken together with Article 14 of the Convention (loc. cit., §§ 64-73). The Court finds no basis on which to distinguish the present cases from that conclusion.


129.  The Government asserted that the applicants had enjoyed the same protection of their rights and freedoms as all other Russian citizens. In particular, they had made use of their right to strike and had applied to the State Labour Inspectorate and to various prosecutors' offices. As to the court action seeking a finding of  <mask>, the Government referred to the decision of the Kaliningrad Regional Court to the effect that the applicants' complaint concerned, in substance, an alleged violation of equality between individuals and as such was to be determined in criminal proceedings under Article 136 of the Criminal Code. They further submitted that since 1997 six persons had been convicted under this provision. The Government pointed out that the applicants had failed to challenge the decisions of the prosecutor's office not to institute criminal proceedings for alleged discrimination, and thus had not exhausted the available domestic remedies.


85.  The Government contended that there had been no  <mask> of the applicants in respect of the first applicant’s status as a registered recognised community, as the criteria introduced by section 11 of the 1998 Religious Communities Act had already corresponded to the administrative authorities’ practice for granting recognition under the 1874 Recognition Act before the entry into force of the 1998 Act. In respect of the ten-year waiting period for registered religious communities, the Government referred to the Constitutional Court’s finding of 3 March 2001 (VfSlg. 12.102/2001) that that requirement served the legitimate aim of ensuring that the competent authority could verify during this period of time whether the religious community was ready to integrate into the existing legal order, in particular whether it performed unlawful activities as a consequence of which legal personality had to be withdrawn (section 9(2) and section 5(1) of the Religious Communities Act). Examples of such unlawful activities were incitement to commit criminal offences, endangering the psychological development of minors, violating the psychological integrity of persons or using psychotherapeutic methods to disseminate its religious beliefs.


59.  The applicants acknowledged that in assessing evidence the standard of proof applied by the Court was that of “proof beyond reasonable doubt”, but noted that the Court had made it clear that that standard had not be interpreted as requiring such a high degree of probability as in criminal trials. They affirmed that the burden of proof had to shift to the respondent Government when the claimant established a prima facie case of  <mask>.


88.  The Government argued that in the instant case no provisions, acts or omissions of the public authorities had exposed the applicants to treatment less favourable than that to which other persons in an analogous situation would have been subjected. There was no indication that their treatment had been based on any prohibited grounds. Consequently, the applicants had not suffered  <mask> in the enjoyment of their freedom of assembly contrary to Article 14 of the Convention.


89.  The Government submitted, as their main argument, that the two categories were not in the same situation. Where the disability had been directly caused by medical negligence, the negligence preceded the disability, was the cause of it and was therefore the original source of the prejudice sustained by the parents through the birth of a disabled child. In the applicants’ case, the negligence had not been the direct cause of the disability, which already existed. The only prejudice it had occasioned lay in not having an abortion, or in not having the possibility of aborting. As the causal links between the medical negligence and the disability were different in the two cases, they – rightly, in the Government’s opinion – formed the rationale for two different sets of liability rules. It could not therefore be concluded that there had been  <mask> since the situations were not the same.


28.  The applicant added that the Court of Cassation had given no reasons for refusing to seek a preliminary ruling and had misunderstood the “personal” and “material” aspects of the non- <mask> principle, which were two quite separate concepts. The allowance in question had been placed in the “social assistance” category solely on the basis of domestic law, without reference to the criteria established by the CJEU (namely the statutory nature and dual function of the benefit and its connection to one of the risks referred to in Article 4(1) of Regulation No 1408/71). Hence, the “Community” dimension of that categorisation operation had been overlooked. In the applicant’s submission, it was clear from the European legislation and the case-law of the CJEU that State‑funded “non-contributory” benefits could not be automatically excluded from the scope of the non-discrimination principle established by the Agreement (the applicant cited, by way of example, the cases of Yousfi, Case C-58/93, judgment of 20 April 1994, concerning the granting of a disability allowance; Commission v. Greece, Case C-185/96, judgment of 29 October 1998, concerning various categories of benefits for large families; and Hughes, Case C-78/91, judgment of 16 July 1992, on the subject of the “family credit” in the United Kingdom). On the basis of his references to that case-law, the Court of Cassation should either, of its own accord, have included the allowance he was claiming within the scope of Regulation no. 1408/71, by analogy, or referred the question to the CJEU, which had not yet ruled on the nature of this particular allowance.


46.  The applicant further maintained that he had submitted truthful data about his place of residence and that he had been forced to leave Ukraine on account of his persecution by the authorities on political grounds. He alleged that the Central Electoral Commission and the Supreme Court had restricted his right to stand for election, contrary to Article 24 of the Constitution of Ukraine, which prohibits  <mask> on the ground of residence.


127.  The applicants contended that the generic anti- <mask> provisions in the Russian legislation to which the Government referred were ineffectual in the absence of a working mechanism for their implementation and application. As to the Government's reliance on the provisions of criminal law, they had failed to show that anyone had ever been charged, tried or convicted under Article 136 of the Criminal Code.


59.  The applicants complain that the non-enrolment of their Romani children for the 2004-2005 school year is due to inertia and to the competent authorities’ omissions. In addition, they see  <mask> based on race and ethnicity in the fact that their children have had to attend special preparatory classes, held in separate rooms in the main building of the primary school of Aspropyrgos, where the other children from a comparable situation are welcomed. They invoke, in this respect, Articles 2 of Protocol No. 1 and 14 of the Convention, which read as follows:


123.  The applicants also alleged that their conviction amounted to a violation of Article 9 of the Convention (freedom of conscience), Article 10 (freedom of expression), Article 11 (freedom of association) and Article 14 (the prohibition on discrimination). After the events in Moscow in August 1991, the CPL/CPSU was banned, and its leaders convicted of crimes against the State. However, the Convention guarantees the rights of political parties without  <mask>. The applicants claimed that the domestic court assessment of the facts and law in their case had been wrong, that the CPL/CPSU had been a party upholding the principles of democracy, and that their activities within the CPL/CPSU and its subsidiary organisations could not have been foreseen as constituting criminal offences at the material time. The applicants stated that they had thus been unjustly punished in the exercise of their beliefs as communists, their legitimate work as journalists, their right of association with other individuals, and their support for the idea of Lithuania’s continuing membership of the USSR during politically turbulent times.


46.  The applicant argued that the respondent State discriminated against him by refusing to grant him an old-age pension on the grounds of nationality criterion enshrined in the 1998 Act. Between 1 November 1998 and 1 April 2003 he had not received any pension or other benefits which had, consequently, seriously affected his life. He maintained that the domestic courts’ decisions and in particular, the fact that he had been granted an advance on his military pension until the enactment of the 1998 Act showed that he had not participated in aggression against Slovenia following its declaration of independence. He submitted that it was unacceptable for the Government to assume that in general all military personnel of the YPA without Slovenian citizenship had participated in hostilities against Slovenia. The applicant further argued that the protection of the economic system could not justify  <mask> on the basis of nationality in his case.


29.  The applicant claimed to have been a victim of  <mask> on the ground of his sexual orientation in that the Supreme Court, in its decision of 5 December 1996, had denied him the status of “life companion” of the late Mr W. within the meaning of section 14 of the Rent Act, thereby preventing him from succeeding to Mr W.'s tenancy. He relied on Article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 8, which provide as follows:


101.  The Government noted that Article 1 of Protocol No. 12 to the Convention prohibited  <mask> in relation to “any right set forth by law”. While its scope was therefore broader than that of Article 14, it was not unlimited. The Government submitted that for Article 1 of Protocol No. 12 to be applicable it was first necessary to establish whether the right in question was actually “set forth by law”. That being so, the Government pointed out that the Religious Communities Act and the Family Act provided for a possibility rather than an obligation to conclude an agreement between the Government of Croatia and one or more religious communities on issues of common interest in order to regulate, inter alia, religious education in public schools and nurseries and recognise the civil effects of religious marriages. Accordingly, the applicant churches could not claim that they had “any right set forth by law” in this regard.


31.  The applicant submitted that the House of Lords judgment had defined the term “ambit” so narrowly as to render imperceptible the difference between interference with a Convention right and  <mask> in the enjoyment of it. If the equality guarantee of Article 14 was to be practical and effective, that difference should be real and significant. In view of the importance of equality as a fundamental principle of democracy, it was appropriate to give Article 14 an expansive meaning, and to construe “ambit” broadly, as it was the cornerstone of the protective scope of the provision. States were required simply to justify differences in treatment as between classes of persons that were based on one or more of the protected grounds. This was no greater an obligation on the State than could properly be expected in a modern liberal democracy. She refuted the Government's assumption that there had to be significant interference or impairment with a right in order to satisfy the ambit test. The threshold for the engagement of Article 14 was altogether different and less exacting than the threshold for interference. To fall within the general scope of Article 8, it was sufficient for the complaint in issue to relate in some material way to a person's private or family life, or home.


113.  The Government submitted that the applicant must demonstrate that there was a relevant difference in treatment, that it had no legitimate aim and that the treatment was not proportionate to that aim. While he was undoubtedly treated differently to other minors, adults and citizens, that is not the relevant distinction. The real question is whether he was treated differently to other minors in the same position and he clearly was not – any other minor with the same problems would have been treated similarly. Even if the Court finds that he was treated differently to other minors, the Government argue that any such treatment had a legitimate aim and was proportionate. The applicant maintained his allegations of  <mask>.


45.  The applicant submitted that he had properly exhausted remedies before the administrative authorities and the Constitutional Court. In particular, his complaints at the domestic level concerning the alleged  <mask> by dint of unfair application of the tax legislation had not been so different as to require a separate examination of the discrimination from the property complaint. Accordingly, by properly exhausting the administrative remedies he had not been required to pursue any other remedy under the Prevention of Discrimination Act with the same objective since it was the Court’s well-established case-law that in the case of several potentially effective remedies an applicant was required only to use one of them. At all events, the Constitutional Court had not declared his constitutional complaint inadmissible for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies, which suggested that he had properly exhausted the relevant remedies before the administrative authorities. The applicant also emphasised that he had properly raised his complaints before the Constitutional Court, complaining in substance of a discriminatory violation of his property rights related to an unfair application of the tax legislation.


41.  The Government submitted that the immunity in question, being attached to a function provided for in the Constitution, did not breach either the principle of the equality of citizens before the law or the prohibition of  <mask>. Its purpose was neither to create a “privileged” class nor to allow parliamentarians to make arbitrary use of their privileges. On the contrary, it pursued the legitimate aim of allowing Parliament to debate any issue relevant to public life freely and openly without its members having to fear persecution or possible legal consequences.


79.  The Government submitted that, unlike in the case of Moldovan and Others (no. 2), the applicants in the present case had failed to prove that they had been forced to live in cramped and unhygienic conditions. In addition, they argued that, except for the first applicant’s statement given before the public prosecutor on 19 January 1995, there was no other evidence in the file that proved that the applicants had had the same address and living conditions between 1994 and 2000 as Petru (Dîgală) Lăcătuş and M.F.Z. From the documents submitted by the Government, it appeared that their registered address during that period had been an address in the village of Voiniceni, and that from 2001 their living conditions had improved after they had moved. Moreover, there was no evidence in the file that the first applicant had been the owner of a house in the village of Hădăreni at the time of the events. Furthermore, although the first applicant alleged that she had been forced to leave the village after the events, she had failed to notify the authorities of any alleged damage she might have suffered. Lastly, the applicants had failed to bring criminal proceedings or proceedings before the National Council for Combating  <mask> concerning the alleged abusive or discriminatory actions of the authorities and of private individuals.


39.  The applicant also sought compensation for non-pecuniary damage, arguing that the  <mask> and alleged attacks against their human dignity had caused his family severe suffering. He further complained about political persecution. He claimed a total of EUR 200,000 under this head. He additionally claimed a sum of EUR 200,000 as compensation for the violation of the Convention to the detriment of thousands of families.


138.  The applicants maintained in the first place that the child, who had not chosen her situation, had been the subject of unjustified  <mask>. Although an adoptive mother had been designated for her in all conscience and according to a well-organised procedure by the authorities of her country of origin, the adoptive tie was denied by the Luxembourg courts. The minor child thus suffered discrimination by comparison with another Peruvian child who had been adopted by a Luxembourg married couple and whose family ties had been recognised in Luxembourg, even if the couple had subsequently separated or if one of the parents had subsequently died.


110.  The Government noted that the applicant had not personally suffered any discrimination on grounds of religion. None of the judicial decisions had referred to her religion as grounds for applying Sharia law to her situation or refusing to recognise her as inheriting all the bequeathed  <mask>. The application of Sharia law to the applicant’s case had been based not on her own situation, but on the specific category of property concerned. The decision not to apply Article 1724 of the Civil Code had been based on the nature of the estate, which consisted of property “held in full ownership”.


93.  The Government relied on the findings of a report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for National and Ethnic Minority Rights, according to which “by means of two weeks of continuous presence, the police was able to ensure that no violence against people or  <mask> took place and the aggression remained at the level of words”. They stated that the Hungarian authorities had taken all the necessary steps to protect the Roma minority in Gyöngyöspata by policing the rallies.


120.  The Government argued that the applicants’ (unrealistic) expectation that dwellings constructed before the Second World War with private funds (and not with social resources) and nationalised under the socialist system would not be returned to their “previous owners” was based on a misinterpretation of the nature of the occupancy right. They pointed out that Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 should apply only to a person’s existing possessions. The occupancy right did not confer ownership rights and the dwellings had been allocated to the applicants for “management” and permanent use. In compliance with the social order then in force, they had to recognise the authority of the “indirect possessor” of the so-called “socially-owned property” (which according to the then applicable principles of real- <mask> law was jointly owned by the people of Slovenia). The possession of the dwelling was linked to the duration of the occupancy relationship, but was not based on a permanent and inalienable right to ownership or another right in rem. This was demonstrated, inter alia, by the fact that for a certain period of time the occupancy right could even be allocated in respect of privately owned flats.


157.  The Government also considered that the relevant law and practice had not imposed on the applicants an excessive burden. While it was true that the modalities of compensation changed several times, that was the reflection of State policy priorities and the availability of State resources. Compensation by bonds was a normal practice in a number of countries from Central and Eastern Europe. In Bulgaria, bonds could be traded in accordance with the relevant stock exchange rules and in July 2005, for example, they were traded at 70 % of their face value. The Government also referred to the fact that in accordance with the relevant law and practice the pre-nationalisation owners were entitled to restitution but could not claim compensation for damage or changes in the  <mask> since the nationalisation in the 1940s. It was therefore justified that the post‑nationalisation owners, who had to return the apartments they had possessed on the strength of a void title, could not claim compensation for improvements they had made. In the Government's view, this solution struck a fair balance between all interests involved.


41.  The applicant, who also relied on the Court's findings in Gaygusuz, contested the Government's arguments as to the applicability of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. She argued that, in that case too, there had been no link between contributions paid and benefits received under the domestic emergency-assistance scheme. She submitted that pecuniary claims on the basis of statutory rules or regulations were closely linked to a person's social security and subsistence and thus of equal weight to other  <mask> rights. They therefore had to be considered as falling within the scope of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.


68.  The Government, for their part, maintained that these claims were manifestly excessive. They submitted that since, under Andorran law, the first applicant’s father could have kept for himself half the assets inherited from his mother, the Government were liable for only half the value of the estate in question, this being the assets that had to be transferred to the first applicant. They did not accept the applicants’ valuation of the assets. According to their expert’s valuation, the Hôtel Pla was worth EUR 661,885. The aggregate value of the other  <mask> (land) was EUR 89,281. In all, the Pla family’s fortune had to be estimated at a maximum of EUR 751,166, to be reduced by one half: one quarter being the reserved portion of the estate and a further quarter being the amount of which the life tenant (the first applicant’s father) could freely dispose. With regard to non-pecuniary damage, the Government submitted that the finding of a violation would constitute in itself adequate just satisfaction.


71.  The applicants pointed out that the 2009 amendments had applied to all pre-1995 leases and as such should also have applied in their case. However, the very fact that they had not obtained anything out of the new law (since the rental value of their  <mask> at EUR 466 per year at the termination of the emphyteusis had already been higher than EUR 185) showed that that law, which was meant to address the imbalance in controlled leases, had failed to differentiate sufficiently between properties and had not ensured that all the owners could benefit from some increase in rent in order to lessen the gap between the established rent and the prevailing fair market rent.


376.  The applicant further complained under Article 8 and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 that the destruction of his and the Orhans' home,  <mask> and possessions represented a serious violation of their right to respect for their private and family lives and their homes and of their right to peaceful enjoyment of their possessions. He also argued that his expulsion from his home, village and community represented a separate and serious violation of his rights under these provisions. The Government disputed that there was any such military operation in Deveboyu as alleged or at all.


628.  The Government further submitted that the procedure for compulsory recovery of arrears of mandatory tax payments had been used in respect of the applicant company, that such tax payments were recovered by way of charging the company’s cash flows on bank accounts, that in the case of insufficient or non-existent funds, the recovery of tax was carried out using the taxpayer’s assets and that the whole procedure was described in detail in the domestic legislation and had been followed by the authorities. In the circumstances, the measures represented the control of the use of  <mask> and were in full compliance with the Convention.


109.  The Government submitted that the applicant had not been discriminated against in the instant case. The Court of Cassation had confirmed its established case-law and pursued the aim of protecting the Muslim minority in Greece by applying the special law of succession uniformly applicable to a specific category of  <mask> belonging to Greek Muslims. In doing so it had protected the specific nature of such property and of its owners, avoiding any infringement of the principle of equality. The settled case-law of the Court of Cassation pursued an aim of overriding public interest in a complex multidimensional area entailing, in particular, respect for and protection of the Thrace Muslim minority, a legitimate aim which was also connected with Greece’s fulfilment of its obligations under international law. It was unthinkable that that aim could be achieved in any other way, in view of the complexity of the many parameters involved, which transcended the individual case.


59.  The Government accepted that there had been an interference with the applicant’s  <mask> rights, but considered that such interference had been lawful, that it had pursued a legitimate aim of securing public finances and that it had been proportionate. Specifically, the Government stressed that the State enjoyed a wide margin of appreciation in tax matters and that the domestic authorities had been best placed to assess individual cases. In the applicant’s case, the domestic authorities had sufficiently taken into account his personal situation but had considered that he could not be exempted from taxation as he had not met the requirements under the relevant domestic law.


48.  The Government considered that the Court at this stage in the proceedings, and in the absence of a comprehensive and final settlement of the  <mask> issue, should not proceed to determine the title over the properties or award compensation without, at least, allowing the “TRNC” authorities time and an opportunity to consider their Compensation Law in the light of its decision on the admissibility of the instant case. Further, the award of compensation to individual applicants such as the present one would seriously hamper and prejudice negotiations for an overall political settlement, including the complex property issue which it was hoped would be solved by diplomatic means. There was also the question of what an appropriate remedy in cases of this nature would be where a significant period of time had elapsed and legitimate third-party and community interests were involved. There was no entitlement to an award. If the Court nevertheless found that the applicant had title to the properties in question, contrary to the Government’s submissions, the Court should exercise its margin of appreciation and discretion in view of the circumstances of the present application and such an award should not be held to be “necessary” at the present stage of the proceedings.


14.  The Government in their submissions on the merits raised the same objection as at the admissibility stage concerning the victim status of the applicant. In particular, they maintained that the  <mask> allegedly owned by the applicant had been registered in the books of the Turkish Muslim religious trust (vakf) as having been dedicated to the religious trust in perpetuity in accordance with the relevant rules and principles and could not be transferred to individuals as private property. They noted that the applicant had not produced an authentic title deed showing registration of her name as recorded in the books of the Land Office but a document certifying that the properties in her name were “Turkish-held properties”. Turkey was not in possession or control of the Land Office records of the “TRNC” and the Government therefore wished to reserve their position to finalise the information about the history of the title to the properties in question.


115.  The applicants contended under Article 8 of the Convention that their right to respect for their family life and home had been violated as they had been forcibly displaced from their village and had been prevented from returning. They maintained under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 that they had lost the possibility of using and enjoying their  <mask> on account of the restrictions imposed by the authorities on their return to their village. They further complained under Article 13 of the Convention that they had no effective remedy for their various Convention grievances.


31.  The applicant submitted that his eviction from his family home and deliberate destruction of his  <mask> by the State security forces constituted a violation of his right to peaceful enjoyment of his possessions and his right to respect for his family life. He also claimed that the circumstances surrounding the destruction of his property and his eviction from his village also amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.


2. The Government regret the occurrence of individual cases of destruction of home,  <mask> and possessions resulting from the acts of agents of the State in south-east Turkey, obliging civilians to leave their villages, and of failure by the authorities to carry out effective investigations into the circumstances surrounding such events, as in the case of the applicant, Hüseyin Ateş, notwithstanding existing Turkish legislation and the resolve of the Government to prevent such acts and to remedy such failures.


36.  The applicant complained first that the refusal of the authorities to grant her a refugee card breached her  <mask> rights under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. She maintained that having a refugee card provided the holder with a number of benefits such as financial aid, scholarships, free education, medical treatment, housing assistance, and help in the form of clothing and footwear. She had applied for a refugee card with a view to seeking housing assistance.


97.  The applicant noted that the annulment of her husband’s will by the Court of Cassation had radically altered the apportionment of the estate between herself and the deceased’s sisters, since she had lost three-quarters of the  <mask> bequeathed, even though the Komotini Court of First Instance had approved the will and she had accepted her husband’s estate. Accordingly, she had had a legitimate expectation that the civil courts would adjudicate on the basis of the Civil Code and that she would enjoy her property rights in respect of her entire inheritance.


278.  The applicants argued that, as tenants of nationalised flats, they had been deprived of the right to purchase their dwellings, unlike all those previous holders of specially protected tenancies who had been living in dwellings not subject to restitution. In addition, even though they had a right akin to a  <mask> right, they were treated differently from bona fide buyers of nationalised dwellings, who could not be compelled to restitute their properties.


34.  The applicant complained that the fact that the domestic courts had preferred the former owner’s  <mask> title deed to his own made it impossible for him at present to exercise his property rights over the apartment, in violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. He also complained of discrimination, under Article 14 taken together with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, in so far as the same Court of Appeal adopted contrasting decisions in identical cases brought against the buyers of apartments situated in the same building.


50.  The Government contested that argument. They maintained that the applicants were challenging the outcome of the proceedings that had led to the judgment of 11 April 2001. That being so, they had failed to initiate enforcement proceedings before the Tirana District Court in order to request the issuing of a writ for the enforcement of the judgment in question. Moreover, in the Government’s submission the applicants had also failed to make use of the remedies introduced by the new  <mask> Act (Law no. 9235 of 29 July 2004) in relation to the issue of compensation. Hence, the applicants’ claim under this head should be declared inadmissible for failure to exhaust domestic remedies.


48.  The Government contended that, if Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 was at all applicable, what had occurred in the present case had to be considered as a control of the use of  <mask> falling within the scope of its second paragraph. They left it to the Court to decide whether an interference giving rise to State responsibility had occurred. They submitted, however, that the alleged interference had been lawful. Furthermore, the wage monitoring system that followed from the Construction Agreement, and the costs to which the applicants were compelled to contribute, served not only the legitimate aim of protecting the rights and freedoms of others, but also pursued the general interest of the community, namely to uphold the legitimacy of the Swedish approach in the area of industrial relations.


25.  The Government limited their submissions under this head to contesting the applicant’s ownership of the  <mask> in question (see paragraph 14 above) and the status of Famagusta (Varosha), where the properties in question were situated. With regard to the latter, the Government stated that the Greek-Cypriot authorities had been responsible for the evacuation of Varosha and for rejecting proposals for and attempts at resettlement of the area. In this connection, they referred to the inter-communal talks concerning this area, various proposals and excerpts of statements made in that context. They submitted that it was not possible for Turkey unilaterally to open this area for settlement on an individual basis without agreed administrative arrangements and the setting up of funds for development and infrastructural projects designed to assist in the process of readjustment. The Government also considered that the Court at this stage in the proceedings and in the absence of a comprehensive and final settlement of the property issue should not proceed to determine the title over the properties in question.


42.  The applicant submitted that his forcible eviction from his family home and deliberate destruction of his  <mask> by the State security forces constituted a violation of his right to peaceful enjoyment of his possessions and his right to respect for his family life. He also claimed that the circumstances surrounding the destruction of his property and his eviction from his villages also amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.


37.  The Government argued firstly that the complaint was inadmissible ratione personae. With regard to the association Synthessi – Information, Awareness-raising and Research, they contended in particular that, as a legal entity, it could not be considered as a direct or indirect victim of the alleged violations. Moreover, the individual applicants could not be considered as victims of the alleged violation from the standpoint of Articles 14 and 8, as they did not suffer direct and immediate adverse consequences as a result of their inability to enter into a civil union. By way of example, the Government observed that the payment of maintenance following the dissolution of a civil union was optional under section 6 of Law no. 3719/2008. Furthermore, the applicants were in any case free to enter into a contract within each couple laying down obligations and reciprocal rights in that regard. As to partners’ inheritance rights, the Government conceded that section 11 of the Law at issue provided for the surviving partner in a civil union to inherit on intestacy. However, the applicants, in view of their age (the oldest of them was still under sixty), could be regarded only as hypothetical victims of the alleged violation. In any case, they could at any time regulate inheritance issues or general issues concerning each partner’s  <mask> status (including their financial relations) by means of a will or contract.


136.  The Government submitted that for there to be an infringement of a  <mask> within the meaning of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, an applicant must demonstrate that he had a title to that property. With reference to the Court’s jurisprudence on the subject, they maintained that the description and identification of property rights were matters for the national legal system and that it was incumbent on an applicant to establish the precise nature of the right under domestic law and his entitlement to enjoy it. The Government noted in this connection that under Turkish law all transactions related to immovable property and all proof concerning ownership had to be based on records of land registry. In cases where the immovable property, such as land, was not recorded at the registry, proof of ownership had to be established in accordance with the rules set out in the Civil Code. Further, where no land survey had been conducted, a decision of a judge was necessary to provide proof of ownership. Finally, the Government stressed that the statements of the mayor of Boydaş village (see paragraphs 23 and 24 above) had no evidential value as such unless they had been admitted as evidence by a national judge in a case which concerned the ownership of land or the ownership of movable property such as livestock.


67.  The applicants complained of a violation of Article 14 in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 as they were being discriminated against with regard to the enjoyment of their  <mask>, since as the law stood, they were obliged to renew their rent agreement on a yearly basis, while people having commercial rents had been freed from such obligation through amendments introduced to the Civil Code in 2009. Article 14 reads as follows: