SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT
133. If the request for reopening of the proceedings is dismissed, the
respective decision is not the “final decision” for the purposes of Article 35
§ 1 and cannot be taken as the starting point of the six-month time-limit (see
Sapeyan v. Armenia, no. 35738/03, § 23, 13 January 2009). If, however,
proceedings are reopened or a final decision is eventually reviewed, the
running of the six-month period in respect of the initial set of proceedings or
the final decision will be interrupted, but only in relation to those Convention
issues which served as a ground for such a review or reopening and were the
subject of examination before the extraordinary appeal body (ibid., § 24).
Finally, if an application for extraordinary review has not led to the reopening
of the initial proceedings, but the domestic courts have nevertheless been
provided with the opportunity of addressing the core of the human rights
issues that the applicant subsequently brought before the Court and did
address them, then the running of the six-month time-limit has to be
considered to have restarted (see Schmidt v. Latvia, no. 22493/05, §§ 66-67
and 70-71, 27 April 2017).
134. Regarding the Constitutional Court of Latvia – and as the European
Court of Human Rights has already established on several occasions – its
jurisdiction is limited to reviewing the constitutionality of legal provisions
and their compatibility with provisions of superior legal force. Accordingly,
for the purposes of Article 35 § 1 of the Convention, applicants are required
to avail themselves of this remedy only if they are challenging a provision of
a statute or a regulation as being as such contrary to the national Constitution
or the Convention; in other words, if the alleged violation stems from a legal
norm itself. On the other hand, the procedure of an individual constitutional
complaint is not an effective remedy where the applicant is complaining of
an allegedly erroneous application or interpretation of a legal provision
which, in its content, is not unconstitutional (see Elberte v. Latvia,
no. 61243/08, §§ 79-80, 13 January 2015, with further references). In such
cases a constitutional complaint does not interrupt the running of the
six-month time-limit.
(ii) Application of these principles in the present case
135. In the present case, the Court notes that the initial calculation of each
of the applicants’ pensions (except for the third applicant, as stated above)
took place between 1999 and 2008, and that none of them appealed against
the respective domestic decisions. On 18 February 2009 the Court delivered
its judgment in the case of Andrejeva, cited above. On 14 August 2009 the
applicants requested that their pensions be recalculated in the light of the
Andrejeva judgment. These requests were refused. The applicants brought
proceedings before the District Administrative Court, seeking the reopening
of their proceedings on the basis of the Andrejeva judgment in accordance
with domestic law. By final decisions of 20 November 2009, 27 November
2009, and 16 December 2009, the District Administrative Court dismissed
47