SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS situations; legitimate aim; proportionality) (see paragraph 189 of the present judgment). 8. What we find unconvincing, however, is the majority’s application of some of those principles and the digression from well-established case-law relating to the State’s margin of appreciation and the intensity of the Court’s scrutiny (see paragraphs 183-85 of the present judgment). It is true that this case is about a matter concerning general measures of economic or social strategy, for which the Court generally holds that States enjoy a wide margin of appreciation under the Convention (see paragraph 184 of the present judgment). However, this case is also, and more importantly, about a difference in treatment based exclusively on grounds of nationality. In such a case, even if the difference in treatment results from general measures of economic or social strategy, “very weighty reasons” have to be put forward by a respondent State before the Court could regard the difference in treatment as compatible with Article 14 of the Convention (see paragraph 183 of the judgment, referring to Gaygusuz v. Austria, 16 September 1996, § 42, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996-IV; Andrejeva, cited above, § 87; and Ribać v. Slovenia, no. 57101/10, § 53, 5 December 2017). Like our other dissenting colleagues, we consider that it is this criterion of “very weighty reasons” that should have been applied in the present case. This seems to have been accepted also by the Constitutional Court (see the judgment of 17 February 2011, § 13, quoted in paragraph 55 of the present judgment). The majority, however, while not entirely overriding that criterion, nevertheless stress that in assessing whether “very weighty reasons” have been put forward, the Court must take into account the circumstances of the case “in determining the scope of the respondent State’s margin of appreciation” (see paragraph 193 of the judgment; see also paragraph 206 of the judgment). After having referred to a number of these circumstances, they conclude that “the assessment of whether the impugned difference in treatment is justified by ‘very weighty reasons’ must be carried out against the background of the wide margin of appreciation to be applied in the circumstances of the present case” (see paragraph 213 of the present judgment). It is difficult for us to understand what exactly the majority purport to say. At best, they blow hot and cold at the same time. At worst, they undermine the strict criterion of “very weighty reasons” by giving the notion of a wide margin of appreciation a prominent, perhaps even determinative, place in it. We continue to adhere to the criterion of “very weighty reasons” required for the justification of a difference in treatment based exclusively on nationality. For the reasons explained below, we think the Court was right in this case to engage more fully with the Constitutional Court’s proposed justifications for the impugned discrimination, given the political and social sensitivity of this issue in Latvia and the importance of judicial dialogue in a 79