DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE KOVLER

I cannot share the conclusion of the Chamber. On 12 May 2003 the Tsentralnyi District Court of Kemerovo ordered the Town Council to provide the applicant ’ s family with a dwelling (“ zhiloe pomeschenie ” in Russian) in strict conformity with the provisions of section 15(14) of the Law on the Status of Servicemen: to provide retired servicemen who have served in the army for more than ten years with a dwelling within three months. Taking into account the fact that the Town Council did not provide the applicant with a dwelling “for a long time”, the District Court specified that enforcement could be secured “by way, among other means, of State housing vouchers ... and also by way of off-budget financial sources” (paragraph 7). To my mind, the proposed alternative did not deprive the applicant of his right to have a council flat within the time fixed by the above-mentioned Law, as its purpose was to find a solution to that end.

The applicant refused the voucher “because of slim chances that the voucher would have been provided promptly, because the voucher had not covered the price of a flat and because the applicant would have been struck off the waiting list for in-kind provision of a flat” (paragraph 15). The Government did not show that the voucher was an effective mode of enforcement of the District Court ’ s judgment, nor did it give any example of this means of enforcement, at least in the Kemerovo region. I regret the lack of any concrete information regarding the implementation of the Federal Programme on “State Housing Vouchers” of 20 January 1998. Unfortunately, there are several examples of non-enforcement of national courts ’ judgments ordering the provision of citizens with flats (see, among other authorities, Sypchenko v. Russia , no. 38368/04, 1 March 2007 ) in which the Court has held that the enforcement of these judgments should be secured by appropriate means.

The only possible alternative in the absence of “real” flats was a cash payment permitting the applicant to buy a flat, as was decided in other Russian cases (see, among other authorities, Malinovskiy v. Russia , no. 41302/02, ECHR 2005 ‑ VII ; Tarasov v. Russia , no. 13910/04, 28 September 2006 ; and Gorlova v. Russia , no. 29898/03, 15 February 2007 ). It was not the applicant ’ s fault that he had to insist on a really effective mode of enforcement of a judgment in his favour.

To my great regret, the reasoning of the present judgment took into account only the formal context of the situation, regardless of the specific circumstances of the case.