SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT 63. The relevant provisions of the Latvian Constitution (Satversme) are worded as follows: Preamble (third paragraph) (Inserted by the Act of 19 June 2014) “The people of Latvia did not recognise the occupation regimes, resisted them and regained their freedom by restoring national independence on 4 May 1990 on the basis of continuity of the State. They honour their freedom fighters, commemorate victims of foreign powers, [and] condemn the Communist and Nazi totalitarian regimes and their crimes.” Article 91 (Inserted by the Act of 15 October 1998) “All persons in Latvia shall be equal before the law and the courts. Human rights shall be exercised without discrimination of any kind.” Article 109 (Inserted by the Act of 15 October 1998) “Everyone has the right to social assistance in the event of old age, incapacity to work, unemployment and in other cases provided for by law.” B. Provisions on the calculation of State pensions 1. Soviet law (before 1991) 64. Before 1991, persons resident in Latvian territory were covered by the same social security scheme as the rest of the population of the USSR. In particular, the pension system at the time was based not on the contribution principle but on the solidarity principle. All pensions were paid from Treasury funds, a portion of the State’s revenue being set aside for pensions. More specifically, employees themselves were not subject to social tax, which was paid by their employers. The social-insurance contributions paid by the various employers were transferred via trade unions to the USSR Treasury, managed by the USSR State Bank. Those funds were then redistributed among the SSRs for a variety of purposes, including the payment of retirement pensions, and the amount of a pension did not depend directly on the amount of tax previously paid to the tax authorities. There was also a personal income tax, part of which was paid to the USSR central tax authorities and the rest to the local tax authorities of the relevant SSR. However, personal income-tax revenues were practically never used for pension payments (for more precise details on the legal provisions applicable during the Soviet period, see Andrejeva, cited above, §§ 26-32). 19