SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS JOINT DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGES O’LEARY, GROZEV AND LEMMENS I. INTRODUCTION 1. To our regret, we cannot agree with the majority that there has been no violation of Article 14 of the Convention, taken in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. In our opinion, after engaging fully with the 2011 judgment of the Latvian Constitutional Court in accordance with good judicial dialogue, the Court should nevertheless have confirmed its ruling in Andrejeva v. Latvia ([GC], no. 55707/00, ECHR 2009) and found that in this case too there has been a violation of Article 14. We had the advantage of reading the dissenting opinion of our colleague Judge Seibert-Fohr, joined by Judges Turković, Lubarda and Chanturia, and agree with much of their analysis. We have preferred, however, to focus on the application of the general principles on equality and non-discrimination to the specific facts of the present case, taking into account the specific position of Latvian non-citizens. The two opinions are complementary. II. THE FACTS AND THE CONTEXT OF THE CASE 2. In the late 1980s, a feeling of discontent with the Soviet regime among the population living at that time in Latvia led to a movement in favour of State independence and democratisation of the political system, which was confirmed by the results of a national plebiscite in which all inhabitants of Latvia, then citizens of the former Soviet Union, participated. In March 1990, the newly elected parliament adopted a declaration re-establishing Latvia’s independence. The Citizenship Act subsequently adopted defined who among these former Soviet citizens were to be considered Latvian citizens, reserving citizenship to those who had been Latvian citizens up to 17 June 1940 as well as their descendants. By contrast, former Soviet citizens who were resident in Latvia but who did not fulfil the conditions for automatically obtaining Latvian citizenship and who had not subsequently obtained any other nationality were granted the status of “permanently resident non-citizen” under the Act of 12 April 1995 on the status of former USSR citizens without Latvian or other citizenship (see the applicable rules as in force at the time, in Sisojeva and Others v. Latvia (striking out) [GC], no. 60654/00, § 47, ECHR 2007-I; see also the judgment of the Constitutional Court of 17 February 2011, § 13, quoted in paragraph 55 of the present judgment). The number of non-citizens residing in Latvia has declined considerably since the restoration of independence. By 2020, non-citizens constituted roughly 10 % of the total population, down from roughly 30% in 1990. The majority of non-citizens are ethnic Russians (see the ECRI report on Latvia 75