SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE SEIBERT-FOHR, JOINED BY JUDGES TURKOVIĆ, LUBARDA AND CHANTURIA I. NO GROUNDS FOR DEPARTING FROM ANDREJEVA V. LATVIA 1. To my regret, I am unable to agree with the majority’s finding of no violation. The present judgment reverses the Court’s judgment in Andrejeva v. Latvia ([GC], no. 55707/00, ECHR 2009), which was based on similar facts. In that case, the Grand Chamber found the distinction made between “permanently resident non-citizens” of Latvia and Latvian citizens in respect of work periods accrued outside of Latvia to be in violation of Article 14 of the Convention taken in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. In the present case, the Latvian Constitutional Court argued in its judgment of 17 February 2011 that the factual circumstances differed considerably from the Andrejeva case, in that Ms Andrejeva was employed in an enterprise that was placed under the authority of the central government of the USSR, or an all-Union enterprise, whereas the regional department in which she worked was located in the territory of Latvia (see paragraph 51 of the present judgment). This aspect, however, was not relevant for the Court’s reasoning in Andrejeva v. Latvia, which dealt with the general question “whether the applicant’s interest in receiving a retirement pension from the Latvian State in respect of her years of service for enterprises based in the territory of the former USSR but outside Latvia falls within the ‘ambit’ or ‘scope’ of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1” (see Andrejeva, cited above, § 75). Nor did the Court rely on this specific aspect in its proportionality analysis (ibid., §§ 87-92), where it exclusively dealt with the fact that the national authorities had refused to take into account her years of employment outside Latvia (see Andrejeva, cited above, § 87). I am therefore unable to accept the narrow interpretation of the Andrejeva judgment given by the Latvian Constitutional Court (for the same conclusion, see the dissenting opinion by Judges O’Leary, Grozev and Lemmens, paragraph 4). 2. In Martinie v. France [GC] (no. 58675/00, ECHR 2006-VI), where the Court also had to deal with an allegedly narrow interpretation, by the respondent Government, of a previous judgment (namely, Kress v. France [GC], no. 39594/98, ECHR 2001-VI), the Grand Chamber stated as follows: “That being so, the Court reiterates that, while it is not formally bound to follow its previous judgments, it is in the interests of legal certainty, foreseeability and equality before the law that it should not depart, without good reason, from precedents laid down in previous cases – even if, the Convention being first and foremost a system for the protection of human rights, the Court must have regard to the changing conditions in Contracting States and respond, for example, to any emerging consensus as to the standards to be achieved (see, for example, Chapman v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 27238/95, § 70, ECHR 2001-I, and Christine Goodwin v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 28957/95, § 74, ECHR 2002-VI).” 90