Legal briefing: Statelessness and the prohibition on discrimination against Romani communities April 2023 difference in the treatment, amounting to a violation of Article 14 in conjunction with Article 8 ECHR. The Court affirmed that the prohibition of discrimination under Article 14 ECHR “extends beyond the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms which the Convention and the Protocols thereto require each State to guarantee. It applies to additional rights, falling within the general scope of any Convention Article, for which the State has voluntarily decided to provide”. 39 Moreover, the ECHR must be construed in light of present-day conditions. As such, in the context of non-discrimination, the ECtHR has indicated that it will consider the evolving domestic law of member States of the CoE and the relevant international instruments relevant in cases. 40 In Kurić and Others v. Slovenia, the ECtHR also ruled on a case concerning former nationals of Yugoslavia who failed to request Slovenian citizenship within the deadline for permanent residents to apply following Slovenia’s independence, leading to their ‘erasure’ from the register of permanent residents. The applicants argued that they were treated less favourably than others who had not been subject to ‘erasure’ of names. The Court’s Grand Chamber noted the importance of discrimination in the case and considered that there had been a difference in treatment between two groups, which was based on national origin of persons, which did not pursue a legitimate aim, and moreover lacked an objective and reasonable justification.41 The Court held that the domestic legal system had failed to clearly regulate the consequences of the ‘erasure’ and to regularise the applicants’ residence status, resulting in a violation of Articles 8(2), 13, and 14 ECHR. Furthermore, the Court said that the ‘erased’ were discriminated against as they were disadvantaged when compared to other nonnationals in Slovenia. The Court particularly noted that the ‘erasure’ led to insecurity, legal uncertainty, and a number of other adverse consequences, such as the destruction of identity documents, the loss of job opportunities and the loss of health insurance. 42 In Andrejeva v. Latvia, the applicant was previously a national of the former USSR, before becoming a “permanently resident non-citizen” of Latvia, where she had resided since age 12. Latvia refused to take the applicant’s 17 years of employment in the former USSR into account when calculating her pension entitlement because she did not have Latvian citizenship. The Grand Chamber accepted in this case that the difference in treatment pursued at least one legitimate aim that was broadly compatible with the ECHR, but it was evident that nationality was the sole criterion for the difference in treatment. In such cases, the Court has held that “very weighty reasons would have to be put forward before it could regard a difference of treatment based exclusively on the ground of nationality as compatible with the Convention”.43 The Grand Chamber further noted that Article 14 ECHR will only be meaningful if the applicant’s personal situation is taken into account exactly as it stands. To do otherwise is “dismissing the victim’s claims on the ground that he or she could have avoided the discrimination by ECtHR, Genovese v. Malta (n 8), §32. ECtHR, Genovese v. Malta (n 8), §44. 41 ECtHR, Kurić and Others v. Slovenia [GC] (n 25), §386-392. 42 ECtHR, Kurić and Others v. Slovenia [GC] (n 25), §267, 334, 356, 396. 43 ECtHR, Andrejeva v. Latvia (n 23), §87. 39 40 8