42 ANDREJEVA v. LATVIA JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINION look at the transitional provisions of the Latvian State Pensions Act in isolation from the relevant international-law context. In interpreting the Convention in this case, a basic rule of treaty interpretation has not been followed. The rule has been summed up as follows: “A treaty cannot be considered in isolation. Not only is it anchored in social realities, but its provisions must be set against other legal norms with which they may be in competition” (see D. Daillier and A. Pellet, Droit International Public, Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 2002, 7th ed., p. 266). This leads the majority to a series of mistakes, such as ignorance of the most comparable case-law. They do not examine properly the nature of the alleged property right that the transitional provisions set forth, although in all the case-law concerning welfare payments the Court has always done so. 5. In my view, there was nothing unreasonable in the transitional provisions of the Act since one cannot say that Latvia was responsible for the pension promises of the USSR or the fact that the USSR could not and the Russian Federation did not uphold them. Moreover, it was Latvia that was a victim of the Soviet aggression and the Court has normally drawn a distinction between States or regimes which have caused suffering and States which of their own good will, free from any obligation, have decided to compensate, at least partly, for the damage caused (see, mutatis mutandis, Associazione Nazionale Reduci dalla Prigionia dall’Internamento e dalla Guerra di Liberazione and 275 Others v. Germany (dec.), no. 45563/04, 4 September 2007, in which Germany was not attributed responsibility for the damage caused by the German Reich, and Woś v. Poland (dec.), no. 22860/02, ECHR 2005-IV, in which partial compensation for slave labour during the Second World War did not create an additional obligation on Poland). In Epstein and Others v. Belgium ((dec.), no. 9717/05, 8 January 2008) it was precisely the distinction drawn in the 2003 Law on victims of war based on nationality that was at issue. The contested provision in the Belgian Law stated: “1. Persons who (1) were resident in Belgium on 10 May 1940; and (2) did not possess Belgian nationality on 10 May 1940, acquired it after that date and retained it on 1 January 2003 ... shall, with effect from 1 January 2003, be entitled, subject to the same conditions and the same procedure, to the advantages secured to persons granted political prisoner status, in respect of pensions and war pensions.” The Court held that there was no obligation under the Convention to repair the damage caused by a third State and that, even if the State decided to do something about it, it enjoyed a wide margin of appreciation in setting the criteria for the enjoyment of the right to compensation. The case was dismissed on ratione materiae grounds. It should also be noted that in