RAMADAN v. MALTA JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINION 37 convenience do not generally produce children46. When someone is not genuinely willing to accept a life-long compromise, like marriage, but only enters into the contractual marital relationship to gain a legal advantage, such as access to citizenship, he or she does not normally wish to have a child from this relationship, thus creating a life-long bond between the respective parents. The birth of a child within wedlock is very strong evidence of the genuineness of the compromise accepted willingly by the partners. No elements were provided to the Court to rebut this presumption. Although the judgment of 19 January 1998 was not challenged and became final, this does not hinder the Court from drawing all logical conclusions for the purposes of assessing the national authorities’ conduct from the time of the annulment until the order of deprivation of citizenship. The national authorities’ conduct from 1998 to 2007 14. The 1998 annulment judgment was entered in the relevant marriage register kept in the records of the Public Registry, which is a government department. This obviously means that the national authorities must have been aware of the applicant’s legal situation since that date, and therefore the applicant cannot be reproached for not having informed the authorities about the annulment. The Government’s argument that the department of Citizenship and Expatriate Affairs, the courts and the Public Registry were different authorities47 is clearly unfounded from an international law perspective, since they all belong to the respondent State, and the lack of communication between them may engage its international liability. 15. Moreover, after the delivery of the annulment decision, it took the national authorities many years until they reacted. From 19 January 1998, date of the annulment judgment, to 8 May 2006, date of the applicant’s notification that an order was to be made to deprive him of his Maltese citizenship on the basis of that judgment, the applicant lived a normal life without being bothered by the national authorities. In addition, his trading permits were continuously renewed48. This conduct of the competent national authorities over more than eight years led the applicant, as it would indeed have led any reasonable person, to consider that his citizenship was under no threat. And since there was no such pending threat, the applicant could genuinely aspire to create a second family in Malta after the failure of 46. At this juncture, it could also be relevant to consider the psychologist’s report, in which the applicant’s anxiety at the time when he was having marital problems was noted. The majority gave no reason to discard this report. 47. See paragraph 82 of the judgment. 48. See paragraph 79 of the judgment. In paragraph 88, the majority argue that any delay did not disadvantage the applicant, who continued to benefit from the situation, but the majority fail to consider that the delay itself and the concomitant benefits that the applicant drew from it have also had an impact on the consolidation of his legal expectations.