CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE ZIEMELE

I fully share the view of the Chamber in this case. I would like to add to the reasoning an aspect which, in my view, is of fundamental importance even though the respondent State did not fully develop it.

The case has arisen in the context of the demise of the Soviet Union, a highly centralized State-run economy at the time. The Republic of Armenia is one of the successor States. The applicant had made deposits in Soviet roubles with the Armenian branch of the USSR Savings Bank on several occasions in the 1970s and 80s. After the demise of the Soviet Union and the creation of the State of Armenia, the applicant, like many other former Soviet citizens in different corners of the former USSR, wanted to recover those deposits. The Soviet rouble was withdrawn from circulation in 1993 by unilateral decision of the Russian Federation. This led Armenia to introduce its own currency and build its own monetary system. Thus, in the early years of independence, to the fears about the possible unavailability of the currency was added the reality that that currency was no longer legal tender.

This is one of the many typical problems that arise when State succession takes place. The Court has had to deal with problems linked to State succession before, albeit in the somewhat different contexts of the disappearance of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (“SFRY”) and German Democratic Republic. In these cases, the Court left a considerable margin to successor States to deal with the problems inherent in situations of State succession. In the Kovacic v. Slovenia case, which concerned the break-up of the SFRY, its banking system and the redistribution of liability for old foreign-currency savings among the successor States of the SFRY, the Grand Chamber agreed with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that “the matter of compensation for so many thousands of individuals must be solved by agreement between successor States” ( Kovacic and Others v. Slovenia , nos. 44574/98, 45133/98 and 48316/99, [GC], judgment of 3 October 2008, § 256).

Experts in the area of State succession have observed, concerning the former USSR, that “A Treaty of Economic and Monetary Union was ... signed by eight republics (without Ukraine) [of the former USSR] on 18 October 1991 and negotiations continued up until the Treaty of Minsk in December creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), with a view to setting up a monetary union” (G. Burdeau, “Money and State Succession in Eastern Europe”, in B. Stern (ed.), Dissolution, Continuation and Succession in Eastern Europe , Kluwer Law International, 1998, p. 48). The initial political will was not, however, accompanied by appropriate economic conditions and thus neither the 1991 agreement nor subsequent agreements with some of the successor States to the former Soviet Union, including Armenia, were put into practice. It was further observed that “the Russian monetary reform of July 1993, which led to the nullification of a large number of the roubles in circulation without the agreement of the other successor States concerned (see paragraphs 6 – 7) [..] was criticized” at the time in the Russian Federation. “On the other hand, no open criticism seems to have been made by the other republics from an international law perspective” (ibid., p. 53).

Be that as it may, it is clear that the new States were faced with immense difficulties in separating from such a centralised economy as the Soviet one. There was no proportionate division of Soviet funds among successor States. This is probably a more dramatic issue in the former Soviet context since the deposits and monetary reserves and so on were essentially centralised. In such circumstances, and despite the best intentions of the Armenian State, it would be very difficult for the Court to rule through the doors of the Convention that Armenia is responsible for the deposits in Soviet roubles or that a particular compensation ought to have been provided instead. That does not mean however that the States concerned have done everything possible under international law to settle pending issues.