SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT Constitutional Court seeking a reassessment of the compatibility of Paragraph 1 of the transitional provisions of the State Pensions Act, instituting the impugned difference in treatment between citizens and “permanently resident non-citizens” in the calculation of their retirement pensions, with Article 91 of the Constitution (guaranteeing the principle of equality and non-discrimination) and Article 14 of the Convention, read in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention. 47. The Constitutional Court accepted their application and instituted proceedings on 24 March 2010 (case no. 2010-20-0106). It considered that the applicants had provided sufficient evidence that no possibility was open to them to defend their rights through the generally available remedies. 48. On 22 March 2010, the third applicant lodged a similar application, specifically pointing to the exclusion of the periods of compulsory military service from the calculation of the insurance period and the resulting refusal to grant him an early retirement pension. On 16 April 2010 the Constitutional Court instituted proceedings with respect to the third applicant also, having held that the contested legal provision had personally affected him and that he had substantiated that he was unable to protect his rights by using the general remedies. On 17 June 2010 the two applications were joined. (b) The Constitutional Court’s second judgment (2011) 49. By a judgment delivered on 17 February 2011, the Constitutional Court found that the impugned legal provision was compatible with the principle of non-discrimination. Analysing the historical context in which the social security system had been created, the Constitutional Court reasoned that, once Latvia’s independence had been restored, the State had to resolve the issue of how to calculate retirement pensions for those persons who had made no contributions to the Latvian State budget, either because they had retired prior to the restoration of independence or because their insurance periods had been entirely or partly accrued during the Soviet regime. With regard to Latvian citizens, the legislature had chosen to include in the calculation all the employment periods and equivalent periods accrued both in Latvia and in the territory of the former USSR outside Latvia. Conversely, with respect to foreign citizens, stateless persons and “permanently resident non-citizens” of Latvia, only the periods of work in the Latvian territory were to be counted (with some exceptions). The treatment of Latvian citizens and “permanently resident non-citizens” of Latvia was thus clearly different and it had to be determined whether this difference was justified. 50. Referring to the Court’s judgment in the Andrejeva case, the Constitutional Court noted that the European Court of Human Rights had only analysed the particular circumstances of that case, rather than the general compliance of the relevant domestic regulation with legal provisions of a higher legal force. The Constitutional Court then drew a distinction between the factual circumstances in the Andrejeva case and those in the case at hand. 11