SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT
decisions” for the purposes of the six-month time-limit. The respondent
Government also submitted that the applicants should have been well aware
that their retirement pensions could only be recalculated on the basis of either
the State Pensions Act or bilateral international agreements. Accordingly,
their reopening requests before the administrative courts had had no legal
basis and it had been inevitable that they would be dismissed.
125. With regard to the allegation that the Constitutional Court’s ruling of
17 February 2011 should be regarded as the final decision, the respondent
Government noted that nothing had prevented the applicants from lodging a
constitutional complaint immediately after their retirement pensions had been
granted. The applicants had not adduced any arguments to justify their
inactivity of up to ten years.
126. In the respondent Government’s view, both the reopening
proceedings before the administrative courts and the constitutional
proceedings were to be regarded as attempts by the applicants to comply
belatedly with the procedural requirements and to restore the running of the
six-month time-limit for the purposes of lodging the present application
before the Court.
127. The applicants submitted that the remedies used by them had been
the only available effective legal avenues and that they had exhausted them
in compliance with the requirements of domestic law. The applicants pointed
out that Paragraph 1 of the transitional provisions of the State Pensions Act
had already been declared constitutional by the Constitutional Court in 2001
in proceedings instituted by twenty members of Parliament (see paragraph 39
above). Accordingly, this claim had already been adjudicated and all the State
authorities, including the courts, were bound by the Constitutional Court’s
findings. Additionally, a claim having already been adjudicated was an
inadmissibility ground under the Constitutional Court Act. The applicants
pointed out that, unlike Ms Andrejeva, they disagreed with the contents of the
domestic law rather than with its interpretation in their particular cases.
128. Only after the Court delivered its judgment in Andrejeva, cited
above, did the legal circumstances change, permitting the applicants to
request the reopening of their administrative proceedings. After their
reopening requests had been refused the applicants brought constitutional
proceedings, save for the third applicant who applied to the Constitutional
Court directly. The Constitutional Court instituted the proceedings and
delivered a judgment assessing the merits of the applicants’ complaint. The
present application was filed within six months of that judgment.
(b) The Court’s assessment
129. The Court notes at the outset that the respondent Government’s
objection does not apply to the third applicant, who lodged his complaint
directly to the Constitutional Court on 22 March 2010, that is, several months
before the calculation of his retirement pension (see paragraphs 27 and 48
45