Legal issue: whether the contested provisions are constitutional, if their uncertainty allow for depriving of the right to dwelling the citizens dismissed from military service who before 1 January 2005 were registered by the bodies of local self-government as persons in need of dwelling, but subsequently moved to another region for permanent residence and were reregistered there after that date, - as opposed to the citizens of the same category who did not change their place of residence.
Ratio decidendi: the Court evaluated the contested rules in the light of two mutually connected tests, both of which are based on the provisions of Art 19 of the Constitution: 1) the one requiring the distinctions in legal regulation of rights of different categories of people to be reasonable and objectively justified, and 2) the other which requires formal certainty, precision, clarity, unambiguity and mutual cohesion of rules. As a result, the Court came to conclusion that the rules in question allow for making unjustified distinctions as regards the realisation of the right to housing, and pointed out that the realisation by the citizens dismissed from military service of the right to free move, choice of the place of sojourn and residence may not entail a change of their legal condition vis-a-vis the State in respect of the provision of housing solely by virtue of the fact of their being reregistered at a new place of residence after 1 January 2005. This fact – given that the original registration of such citizens as persons in need of housing took place before 1 January 2005 – may not by itself serve as a proper ground for drawing distinctions with respect to the rights granted in this area between them and the citizens, who belong to the same category but did not change their permanent place of residence after their registration by bodies of local self-government as persons in need of dwelling premises.
As a result, the contested rules have been deemed to be unconstitutional to the extent they established the aforementioned unjustified distinctions. In so doing, the Court ruled that for the sake of preserving the stability of legal relations and until the corresponding legislative amendments are made, the provision of dwelling premises to citizens belonging to the category in question who were dismissed from military service must proceed from the time of their registration at the new place of residence.