SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS formed ties with a country when they seek such benefits (see British Gurkha Welfare Society and Others, cited above, § 84). In particular, the Court has held that a State may have legitimate reasons for curtailing the use of resource-intensive public services such as welfare programmes, benefits and health care by illegal or short-term immigrants who, as a rule, do not contribute to their funding (see Ponomaryovi, cited above, § 54). While it may be legitimate to make social benefits dependent on the legality and duration of residence in a country (see Koua Poirrez, cited above, § 47), it is difficult to justify a requirement that work-related benefits be tied exclusively to nationality, without regard to the contributions made to the scheme by those applying for the benefit and without regard to their contribution to the country’s economy more generally (see Gaygusuz, cited above, where the applicant’s request for emergency assistance in the form of advance payment of his pension entitlements was refused on the grounds of his nationality, §§ 46-47; see also Luczak, cited above, §§ 49 and 55, where the applicant was refused admission to the farmers’ social-security scheme on the grounds of his nationality, and where the Court attached importance to the fact that the applicant had previously contributed as a taxpayer to that scheme). The cases decided to date by the Court thus demonstrate that, in order to determine whether very weighty reasons have been put forward, the Court considers, inter alia, the subject of the benefit sought, whether the claimants have contributed to the relevant scheme, whether they have legally resided in the country and the duration of this residence. D. Valid distinctions in a contribution-based pension scheme 8. In the present case, the pension scheme was funded by contributions payable by all those working in Latvia, as the future beneficiaries of the scheme, and by their employers. By means of their contributions, the applicants established a link to the pension scheme. As legal long-term residents of Latvia, they have spent substantial parts of their lives in that country, where they worked and contributed to its economy. The links that they had established with Latvia as permanent residents by the time of applying for their pensions were therefore substantial. The third applicant, who arrived in Latvia at the age of three, has spent practically his entire life in Latvia, being obliged to interrupt his residence there only for the duration of his compulsory military service. 9. Like our colleagues, I believe that there would be no objection to a policy excluding periods of employment accrued outside the country (see paragraph 201 of the present judgment and the other dissenting opinion, paragraph 3). I recognise that, if a State chooses to credit periods spent outside a given country (a pension scheme can reasonably take into account whether a person who moves to the country has been employed for the major part of his or her working life in that country, and thus contributed to its economy 93