PARTIALLY DISSENTING OPINION OF Mr. L. LOUCAIDES

     To my regret I disagree with the conclusion of the majority that

Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 considered alone or in conjunction with

Article 14 was not violated in this case.

     In the light of the judgment of the Court in the case of Pressos

Compania Naviera S.A. and others (Series A no. 332) the claims of the

applicants for restitution constituted assets and therefore amounted

to possessions for the purposes of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.

     The impugned retrospective legislation had, in my opinion, the

effect of depriving the applicants of their possessions in question:

because of that legislation they could not any more recover the money

they had paid under invalid regulations - contrary to what has happened

with the Woolwich.

     The majority examined the interference with the applicants

possessions under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and found that the

interference in question fell to be considered under the third rule

which explicitly reserves the right of Contracting States to pass such

laws as they may deem necessary to secure the payment of taxes.

     I disagree with this approach for the following reason:

     In the cases under consideration the impugned legislation was not

ordinary taxation law; it retrospectively validated past taxation

regulations the invalidity of which gave rise to the claims of the

applicants for the recovery of the sums of taxes levied under such

regulations. As already pointed out, these claims amounted to

possessions. Therefore the direct and clear effect of the legislation

in question was to deprive the applicants of these possessions even

though its backdrop was one of taxation.

     The majority also found that a fair balance was struck between

the demands of the general interests of the community and the

requirements of the protection of the individual's fundamental rights.

According to the majority the relevant legislation was in fact serving

the general interests in that it was aiming at implementing the

original intention of the parliament as expressed in 1985 and 1986

which was later on frustrated due to the invalidity of the relevant

regulations.

     In my view, the intention of Parliament could not tilt the

balance in favour of the public interest so long as that intention was

not at the material time, i.e. when the Regulations were originally

introduced, expressed in a legally effective way. When it was so

expressed it took the form of retrospective legislation which

interfered with the pending judicial proceedings of the applicants.

This amounted to a breach of Article 6 of the Convention. In these

circumstances, I believe that the legislation in question could not be

considered as serving a legitimate public or general interest for the

purposes of any right safeguarded under the Convention including the

right to property.

     Therefore I find that there has been a violation of Article 1 of

Protocol No. 1 in this case.

     Furthermore, I am of the view that the complaint of the

applicants that they were discriminated against in comparison with the

Woolwich is well-grounded.

     The majority found that there existed an objective and reasonable

justification for treating the applicants differently from the Woolwich

as, unlike the applicants, the Woolwich at the material time had

already obtained a judicial decision for the recovery of the money paid

under the invalid taxing regulations.  However, both in the case of the

Woolwich and in the cases of the applicants the claims of restitution

related to the same situation i.e. the invalidity of the regulations

under which the amounts claimed were paid in the form of taxes; in both

cases the lawfulness of the regulations in question was disputed from

the outset and the relevant claims were legally well-founded.

Furthermore, as I have already pointed out above the retrospective

validation of the regulations in question amounted to an unjustified

interference with the applicants' claims - possessions.

     Article 14 prohibits discriminatory treatment, as regards the

rights safeguarded by the Convention, between persons similarly

situated taking into account the aim and effects of the measure under

consideration.

     In the circumstances of the case, I do not find that the

different treatment of equally valid claims i.e. those of the

applicants and of the Woolwich, which were based on the same facts and

legal grounds, was justified given the aim and effect of the relevant

legislation i.e. to validate the taxation challenged by all of the

claimants. The difference in the means of procedures used by the

claimants in pursuing their claim cannot, I think, be a valid ground

for the difference of the treatment accorded to them. Such means of

procedures had no direct link with the object of the legislation in

question.  In any case it may be useful to add in this respect that the

applicants while not formally being joined to the proceedings of the

Woolwich could legitimately expect to benefit from a favourable outcome

of the Woolwich proceedings.

     In the light of the above, I find that there was no reasonable

justification for treating the applicants differently by excluding the

Woolwich from the ambit of section 53 or the 1991 Act. This, in my

view, amounts to a violation of Article 14 of the Convention taken

together with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.

                                                 (Or. English)