CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE MIJOVI Ć

Although I have voted with the majority of the Chamber, my reasoning with respect to the finding of a violation of Article 8 of the Convention differs to a significant extent from the views expressed in the judgment.

According to the present judgment, Article 8 of the Convention has been violated because there is no possibility, under the Moldovan law in force, for the applicant to have examined his claim to belong to a particular ethnic group in the light of objectively verifiable evidence adduced in support of that claim (see paragraph 59 of the judgment). While the majority concentrated on the requirements of Moldovan law that made it impossible for the applicant to adduce any evidence in support of his claim, in my personal opinion a violation should have been based on the authorities ' refusal to uphold the applicant ' s request to change the records in such a way as to reflect his own perception of his ethnic identity.

Turning to the facts of this case, one cannot but notice that there is an apparent inconsistency between, on the one hand, the practice of the Moldovan authorities in the field of recording ethnic identity and, on the other hand, both the domestic (the Constitution of Moldova and the Law on the Rights of Persons belonging to National Minorities) and international law (Article 3 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of 1995) (see paragraphs 14, 15 and 24 of the judgment). While both domestic and international law provide that any person has the right freely to choose whether or not to belong to an ethnic minority, it seems to be the practice of the Moldovan authorities to impose a particular ethnicity (Moldovan) on an individual, a practice which I find per se contrary to the principle of self-identification which was not only accepted but further developed in the Grand Chamber ' s Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina judgment ( Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina [GC], nos. 27996/06 and 34836/06 , 22 December 2009 ) . In that judgment, the Grand Chamber established that the applicants, who described themselves as being of Roma and Jewish origin and who did not wish to declare affiliation with the constituent peoples (Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs), were discriminated against (see paragraph 45 of the judgment,). The issue of ethnicity as discussed in that particular judgment was explained as having its origin in the idea of societal groups characterised in particular by a common nationality, religious faith, shared language or cultural and traditional origins and backgrounds (see paragraph 43 of the judgment). The particular importance of that case for the present one is to be found in the conclusion to be drawn from the Grand Chamber ' s reasoning, namely that one ' s choice to declare affiliation with an ethnic group (or not) needs to be respected. In Moldova , just as in Bosnia and Herzegovina , ethnic affiliation is not to be regarded as a legal and objective concept, but a political and subjective one. It has not been shown in the present case that there were any objective parameters for establishing affiliation with a particular ethnic group, nor any legal consequences for an individual who establishes such affiliation. Thus, I consider self-identification primarily as a matter of personal perception rather than a matter based on objective grounds, and that is why I do not share the Chamber ' s reasoning in the judgment.