Applicant (AP3): Mr. President, distinguished judges of the court, the main issues raised by the present case transcends the personal interests of the applicant. They originate in a domestic legislation that has no precedent in the European legal landscape and that give rise to important questions of general interest not only for Slovenia, but also for other states' parties to the convention. Following the enactment in 1999 of the Financial Operations of Companies Act, the so-called FOCA, over 24,000 companies incorporated under Slovenian law was struck off ex officio from the court's register of companies. And the shareholders were automatically exposed to personal and unlimited liability for any outstanding debt of the struck off company. Without any prior notice, the personal assets were seized by creditors, their business ruined, the families destroyed. The present case is not just about piercing the corporate veil in exceptional circumstances. It is about a massive and outright erasure of companies literally blowing to pieces the life of tens of thousands of individual shareholders irrespective of their role in the companies and of any established abuse of corporate veil. The government will argue that these measure was absolutely necessary in order to tackle the problem of inactive companies and to ensure an adequate protection to the company's creditors. However, this problem is no different in any other European state. And yet, none of them has ever resorted to such a draconian measure so profoundly offending the life and property of around 2.5 of the national population. The truth is, as the government conceded, that it would have been particularly burdensome for the judicial system to open bankruptcy proceedings against thousands of allegedly inactive companies. Their massive erasure was then a much easier arrangement. And the need to protect the company's creditor became just a convenient camouflage. The facts of the case as established in the chamber's judgment are not in dispute between the parties. I will briefly recall them for the court's assistance. In 1992, Mr. Lakic acquired a share of 11.11% in the company LE, which at that time was in full operation. In 1993, the Railway of Slovenia initiated enforcement proceedings against the company for collecting an alleged pre-existing claim relating to transportation services. While the enforcement proceedings were pending, the applicant and the other shareholders applied for voluntary bankruptcy in order to wind up the company. But their application was rejected. Therefore, they decided to wait for the opening of ex officio bankruptcy proceedings, which as accepted by the government, should have been initiated by the District Court of Ljubljana on its own motion under the 1993 Companies Act, then in force. However, such proceedings were never opened. It was only in 2001, after the entry into force of the FOCA, that the District Court instituted on its own motion the new striking of proceedings against the company. At that time, the applicant did not hold any position in the company, as he had resigned as managing director nearly five years before. The striking of proceedings were conducted swiftly without the applicant and the other shareholders being aware of it. As a result, on 25 September 2001, the company, LE, ceased to exist as a legal entity. Meanwhile, on 22 November 2000, the District Court of Ljubljana granted the Railways of Slovenia's application for enforcement against the company. But after its striking off, the Railways of Slovenia sought to enforce its claims against the applicant and the other former shareholders in person, according to Article 27, Paragraph 4 of the FOCA. The applicant challenged this provision up to the Constitutional Court, alleging that it was unforeseeable and disproportionate. However, that was to no avail. And ultimately, he was forced to enter into an out-of-court settlement with the Railways of Slovenia. Those bare facts give rise to the injustice that Mr. Leckage brings to this court. When the fourth section looked at the matter, it did not have the benefit of the comparative law analysis, and it failed to consider four major factors which carry particular weight, both in terms of foreseeability and proportionality. First, the excessive burden imposed on the applicant as a minority shareholder. Second, the unprecedented character of the contested legislation. Third, the influence of the repeated changes of the legislative framework. Fourth, the massive and devastating effects of the measure on the Slovenian population. When pondered together against the public interest allegedly pursued, these four factors warrant a complete reversal of the findings made by the chamber. My colleagues will address the applicant's complaint in Article 6 and Article 1, Protocol 1, while I will briefly deal with these four factors. It is our first submission that the chamber failed to consider that the Foka regime of shareholders liability caused the applicant to bear the entire burden of the company's erasure to the advantage of its creditors. When Mr. Lekic acquired a share in the company in 1992, the Railway of Slovenia had already a claim against that company. The applicant had no influence in the making of such claim, and the creditor had no legitimate expectation to be entitled to collect their claims against company's individual shareholders. 18 years later, in 2011, the applicant was held personally liable for the outstanding debt of the company, and ultimately forced it to pay entirely out of his pocket. A shift of liability from the company to the applicant in person was the result of the swift implementation of the Chapter 3 of the Foka. The new legislation was therefore applied in a retroactive fashion to the applicant's detriment when the enforcement proceedings instituted by the Railway of Slovenia were still pending. We therefore submit that the applicant's convention rights have been breached because the new legislation has been applied with retroactive effect, and even in proceedings that were already pending, as this court already found in the case of Presto's Companhia Naviera versus Belgium. As my colleagues will explain in detail, the shareholders' personal and unlimited liability is the automatic effect of a pure legal fiction introduced by the Foka. And its implementation in the applicant's case is the result of a chain of presumptions which runs counter the convention requirements. Turning to my second point, it is to be noted that the draconian measuring question does not find an equivalent in any of the legal system of the other contracting states. This factor weighs strongly against the government attempt to justify the interference as being proportionate to the general interest pursuit. In Pockisch versus Latvia, this court stated that, and I quote, it has always been mindful of the separate legal personality of companies authorizing the piercing of corporate bail only in exceptional circumstances, end of quote. And since agrotexting and others, such principle has been consistently reiterated in numerous judgments to which we referred in our written submissions. The court's position is perfectly consonant with the well-established state's practice and international jurisprudence on the matter. As highlighted by most authoritative scholars, the firm distinction between the separate entity of the company and that of the shareholder is a universal principle of company law. As such, it has been recognized by the International Court of Justice in Barcelona Traction and more recently by the European Court of Justice in the preliminary ruling delivered in 2010 in the case C81-09. As pointed out by the advocate general of the ECJ, this principle reflects one of the common features of companies incorporated with limited liability in different member states. According to the advocate general, and I quote, the national legal orders prescribe a limitation of liability for companies which share capital. And although the formulations differ, the idea always is that the members are not liable vis-a-vis the company's creditors, end of quote. The comparative law analysis of the University of Maribor that we have submitted upon requests of the judge rapporteur points to the same conclusion. In no former Yugoslav Republic other than Slovenia, the striking off of inactive companies ever resulted in the automatic shifting of liability from the company to the shareholders. The same holds true for other European states, such as Austria, Germany, and Italy. This conclusion is reinforced by the comparative analysis submitted by the responding government with regard to Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Estonia, and Russia, and also by the third party brief of the Malta Institute of Management with regard to Malta. According to the well-established case law of this court, the so-called common ground factor plays a crucial role in the assessment of proportionality, which is relevant under both Article 6 and Article 1, Protocol 1. And the comparative law analysis provided by the parties clearly show that all legal systems of the Council of Europe member states do not allow personal and unlimited liability of shareholders, save in extreme cases where they have provably abused corporate vay. This leads me to my third point. Slovenia had been in line with this common standard ever since the 1993 Companies Act. Then change came abroad in 1999. And after that, the regulation of shareholders' liability was repeatedly amended by the Parliament and by the Constitutional Court. Ultimately, it was repealed in 2011, and the principle of the corporate veil was fully reinstated. In our written submissions, we have set out in detail the discriminatory effects of these subsequent changes of legislation and the great weight that these carries in the assessment of the proportionality issue. It is thus rather surprising to hear from the government that this chain of modifications of the legal framework had no influence on the applicant case. Mr. President, this is precisely our claim. As in Pine Valley, to quote but an example, the subsequent changes in the law did not avail the applicant, although they could have done so. For instance, the 2008 amendment excluding the personal liability of shareholder holding less than 25% share did not benefit the applicant, nor could it benefit from the 2011 reform that eventually cancelled the shareholder personal liability. This shows that the measure complained of does not satisfy the test of proportionality and cannot be deemed in accordance with the general interest. Turning to my last point, it must be underlined that the applicant's case is not an isolated incident. As mentioned earlier, his fate is shared by tens of thousands of former shareholders who have been held personally liable based on the same legal fiction introduced by the FOCA. The main argument on which the chamber relied in order to justify the interference, namely an alleged lack of due diligence of the liable shareholders, is then clearly contradicted by the actual reach of the measure in question. We are not saying that this lack of diligence has not been assessed in a fair manner. What we say is that he has not been assessed at all. It has not been assessed in the applicant's case. It has not been assessed in respect of the other thousands of shareholders concerned. After all, had such an assessment been carried out, the FOCA would have just missed its main objective, which, according to the government, was to relieve domestic court from the flawed bankruptcy proceedings that should have been undertaken under the Companies Act. Mr. President, there are faces behind numbers and there are families behind each shareholder. As noted in the amicus curia of the civil initiative, these families strive to get through while their basic income, being a salary or pension, is being seized by creditors of strong struck-off company. It is also on behalf of all the victims of the company's erasure that the applicant pleads for the Green Chamber to reverse the chamber's finding on the basis of a more careful and thorough assessment of the factors outlined above. Thank you very much, Mr. President.