G.T.B. v. SPAIN JUDGMENT and a vulnerable person, risked as a consequence to remain without identity documents for a significant further period of time (see paragraph 41 above). It was not before January 2004 when the Civil Registry decided to take some active steps by contacting directly the Consular Affairs Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (see paragraph 44 above). On 11 January 2005 Ms X and her sons appeared at the Civil Registry of La Laguna requesting the urgent processing of the registration of her children’s birth, alleging once again that she had been unable to provide birth certificates and that she had already submitted everything in her possession, that is, her own birth certificate, her passport and social security card, both bearing the names of her children, the certificate of residence of all three of them, a copy of the administrative file on the request for their late birth registration, and her repeated requests to the Central Civil Registry (see paragraph 47 above). 129. The Court notes that only after all the above endeavours had proved to be unsuccessful, a decision was taken to set a new date for Ms X’s “recognition” of her sons (as had already taken place in 1999; see paragraph 36 above) at the court in La Laguna. This took place on 13 May 2005: Ms X recognised her children at a hearing with the judge, the applicant’s sister also attested to their relationship, and the applicant and his brother consented to their recognition by their mother and their birth registration. They were all examined by the forensic doctor, who verified their biological age, and decrees were published to make the recognition official (see paragraph 50 above). Despite the above, Ms X was again asked several months later to submit the certificates of the studies pursued by her sons, which she claimed she could not produce. In view of this, the late birth registration was eventually agreed upon and the applicant’s birth was registered in 2006. In sum, four years elapsed between the moment when it became apparent to the public authorities that the applicant’s mother could not facilitate any further documents to register her son’s birth, and its actual registration. The Court considers that there was no justification to delay until May 2005 the “recognition”, which seemed to be the only way to prove the mother-son relationship and, hence, to proceed with the issuing a birth certificate for the applicant, in the absence of any relevant Mexican documents. Hence, for the Court, the public authorities did not take sufficiently adequate and timely action in discharging their positive obligation to assist the applicant in his obtention of a birth certificate and connected identity documents when it was clear, from 2002, that he required such assistance; they merely insisted on the applicant’s mother responsibility to comply with all the legally established criteria, notwithstanding their awareness that no further documents concerning the applicant´s birth in Mexico would be found and disregarding the particular vulnerability of the applicant. 130. It is not for the Court to examine the question of which concrete measures the public authorities could have put in place in order to assist the 35