SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT 2. The 1990 and 1995 State Pensions Acts 65. The main instrument governing pensions is the State Pensions Act of 2 November 1995 (Likums « Par valsts pensijām »), which came into force on 1 January 1996, repealing the previous Act passed in 1990. Section 3(1) of the Act provides that persons who have been covered by the compulsory insurance scheme are entitled to a State social-insurance pension. As a rule, the amount of the pension in each particular case depends on the period during which the entitled person, the employer or both paid, or are presumed to have paid, insurance contributions in respect of State pensions (section 9(1) and (2)). Evidence of this period is provided by data at the disposal of the State Social-Insurance Agency (section 10). 66. Matters relating to the reckoning of years of employment under the Soviet regime (prior to 1991) are governed by the transitional provisions of the Act. Paragraph 1 of these transitional provisions, as in force from 1 July 2008 until 18 July 2012, provided: “In the case of Latvian citizens, periods of employment and equivalent periods accrued in the territory of Latvia and of the former USSR up to 31 December 1990, as well as the aggregate period spent outside Latvia in the case specified in sub-paragraph (10) of this paragraph, shall be counted towards the insurance period. In the case of foreign nationals, stateless persons and non-citizens of Latvia, the insurance period shall be composed of periods of employment and equivalent periods that have been accrued in the territory of Latvia, as well as the equivalent periods that have been accrued in the former USSR in the cases specified in sub-paragraphs (4) and (5) of this paragraph, and the aggregate period spent outside Latvia in the case specified in sub-paragraph (10) of this paragraph. The following periods, which are treated as equivalent to employment, and which have been accrued up to 31 December 1990 – but in case of sub-paragraph (11) of this paragraph up to 31 December 1995 – shall be counting towards the insurance period: (1) mandatory active military service and alternative (work) service; (2) career service for soldiers and service for officers in the Army of the Republic of Latvia, for citizens of Latvia – also in the USSR Armed Forces, if as a result of their activities in the interests of Latvia they had been demoted or if they had been called up for active military service after serving their compulsory military service or after graduating a civil university ...; (3) rank and file service and position of unit commanding personnel in the institutions dealing with internal affairs, with the exception of the KGB [the State Security Committee]; (4) periods of study at higher-education institutions, and at other training institutions at post-secondary level, subject to a limit of five years in the case of qualifications requiring up to five years of study at the relevant time, and a limit of six years in the case of qualifications requiring more than five years of study at the relevant time; (5) periods of full-time doctoral studies, up to a maximum of three years, postgraduate education or ongoing vocational training; (6) individual work; 20