SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT relating to the employment periods in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan (about eight years), which remain excluded (see paragraphs 34-37 above). Finally, the third applicant has spent practically all his life in Latvia, interrupting his residence there for the duration of his compulsory military service (about two years) outside Latvia (see paragraphs 25-28 above). (i) The alleged ground of discrimination 191. In the Andrejeva judgment, cited above, the Court held: “87. ... The Court notes ... that as a ‘permanently resident non-citizen’, the applicant is lawfully resident in Latvia on a permanent basis and that she receives a retirement pension in respect of her employment ‘in Latvia’, that is, for entities based in Latvian territory. The national authorities’ refusal to take into account her years of employment ‘outside Latvia’ is based exclusively on the consideration that she does not have Latvian citizenship. It was not disputed in the instant case that a Latvian citizen in the same position as the applicant, having worked in the same enterprise during the same period, would be granted the disputed portion of the retirement pension. Moreover, the parties agreed that if the applicant became a naturalised Latvian citizen she would automatically receive the pension in respect of her entire working life. Nationality is therefore the sole criterion for the distinction complained of ...” 192. In the present case, the Court sees no reason to depart from this conclusion. It appears that in the Latvian legal system the terms “nationality” and “citizenship” have the same meaning (for an example of interchangeable use of both terms, see Kurić and Others, cited above). It was clearly stated in Paragraph 1 of the transitional provisions of the State Pensions Act that the impugned difference in treatment is between Latvian citizens and other categories of people – that is, foreign nationals, stateless persons and “permanently resident non-citizens” of Latvia (see paragraph 66 above). Both the Constitutional Court in its judgment of 17 February 2011 and the Latvian Government in its observations before the Court have, in substance, recognised this, justifying the difference in question by the idea that the State has to assume particular responsibility for its own citizens. Moreover, as the respondent Government have pointed out, if the applicants had become Latvian citizens by way of naturalisation, their pensions would be recalculated to include the periods of employment and mandatory military service outside Latvia, and the amount of their pensions would become – albeit only ex nunc – identical to the amount that Latvian citizens with the same employment history would receive (see paragraph 172 above). 193. This being so, the Court cannot but reaffirm its earlier conclusion, reached in the Andrejeva case, namely that “nationality”, or rather the absence of Latvian citizenship on the applicants’ part, is the sole criterion for the distinction complained of (see Gaygusuz, cited above, §§ 40 and 47; Koua Poirrez v. France (no. 40892/98, §§ 41 and 47, ECHR 2003-X); and, mutatis mutandis, Rangelov v. Germany, no. 5123/07, § 99, 22 March 2012). Accordingly, very weighty reasons must be adduced to justify a difference in treatment in such cases. Nonetheless, the specific circumstances of the case 64