CEDH · CASELAW;COMMUNICATEDCASES;ENG — 17 juin 2017

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .sFE10DC93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .sA6BC7FA7 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-indent:14.2pt; text-align:right } .s9793A85B { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-indent:14.2pt } .s5E1364CA { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:14pt } .s8229ABDD { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:center } .s68C46B95 { margin-top:36pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:center } .s3F59B822 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; text-transform:uppercase } .sA8776625 { margin-top:18pt; margin-left:29.2pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-indent:-17.6pt; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .s72C8F48C { margin-top:12pt; margin-left:36.6pt; margin-bottom:6pt; text-indent:-15.05pt; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid } .sF7A86111 { margin-top:6pt; margin-left:21.25pt; margin-bottom:6pt; text-indent:7.1pt; font-size:10pt } .s34D46E87 { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:6pt; text-align:center; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:10pt } .sA20670C4 { margin-top:12pt; margin-left:48.75pt; margin-bottom:6pt; text-indent:-17pt; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:10pt } .sD3B63DAD { margin-top:36pt; margin-bottom:12pt; page-break-inside:avoid; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:14pt }   Communicated on 17 June 2017   FOURTH SECTION Application no. 6874/14 Jolanta WITTIB against Lithuania lodged on 16 January 2014 STATEMENT OF FACTS The applicant, Ms Jolanta Wittib, is a Lithuanian citizen who was born in   1959 in Vilnius. Currently she lives in Sautens, Austria. She is represented before the Court by Ms E. Matulionytė, a lawyer practising in Vilnius. A.     The circumstances of the case The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows. On 8 August 2008 in the Austrian town of Oetz the applicant married an Austrian citizen, Friedrich Anton Wittib. She chose her husband’s surname, and the Austrian authorities delivered a marriage certificate in which her forename and surname were given as “Jolanta Wittib”. On 14 October 2008 the applicant asked the Lithuanian authorities to register her Austrian marriage certificate and to issue her with a Lithuanian marriage certificate. The Lithuanian authorities issued her with a marriage certificate, indicating her forename and surname as “Jolanta Vittib”. The applicant disagreed with the unilateral decision to change the spelling of her surname. Afterwards, on 2   April 2010, the municipal authorities in Vilnius issued the applicant with a Lithuanian passport in which her name was given as “Jolanta Vittib”. The applicant again contested this change to the spelling of her surname, maintaining that as she lived in Austria this exposed her to a number of difficulties, such as when concluding contracts, taking part in local elections, trying to use social and medical insurance, and using a car – in all such situations she encountered difficulties when having to prove her identity. She also noted that the different spellings of her and her husband’s surname caused problems for third persons trying to confirm the identity of her and her husband as a married couple. The applicant then instituted court proceedings, asking the Vilnius City First District Court to order the Vilnius city municipal authorities to issue her with a new Lithuanian marriage certificate that would give her surname as “Wittib”. The State Commission on the Lithuanian Language ( Valstybinė lietuvių kalbos komisija ), a State institution regulating questions concerning the State language, which under Article 14 of the Constitution is Lithuanian, explained to the court deciding the applicant’s case why a person’s forename and surname had to be written in the letters of the Lithuanian alphabet – which does not comprise the letter “W” – but asked the court to decide the case as it saw appropriate. By a decision of 30 June 2011 the Vilnius City First District Court refused the applicant’s request. It noted that the existing legal regulation – in particular, the Supreme Council’s resolution of 31   January 1991, the Constitutional Court’s ruling of 21 October 1999, and the civil registration rules approved by the Minister of Justice on 19 May 2006 (see the “Relevant domestic law” part below) – did not allow the applicant’s surname to be written as “Wittib”. The court also considered that the applicant had not encountered “serious administrative, professional or personal difficulties”, and that the Lithuanian regulation in question was therefore not in contradiction with European Union law. In the view of the first instance court, the applicant had experienced only “simple personal or household-related difficulties”. The applicant appealed, arguing, inter alia , that writing her surname as “Wittib” could not destroy the integrity of the Lithuanian State or undermine the status of the State language. The applicant observed that in Lithuania’s Foreigners’ Register, foreigners’ forenames and surnames could be written using Latin alphabet letters, such as “W”. She also pointed out that writing her surname as “Vittib” in any case did not conform to Lithuanian spelling rules, for it was not common in the Lithuanian language to have words containing the double consonant “t”. Furthermore, in the German language “W” was pronounced as “V”, and “V” was pronounced as “F”, which gave rise to further misunderstandings in her daily life. The applicant also relied on Article 8 of the Convention, arguing that the Lithuanian authorities’ refusal to issue her with documents rendering her surname as “Wittib” amounted to disproportionate interference with her right to respect for her private and family life. The applicant lastly asked the Vilnius Regional Court to refer for a preliminary ruling to the European Court of Justice the question of whether the administrative, professional and personal difficulties she had experienced because of the spelling of her family name as “Vittib” instead of “Wittib” in her Lithuanian documents could be seen as necessary and proportionate in the light of Article 21 of Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (hereinafter – “TFEU”), which stipulates that every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the European Union member States, subject to the limitations and conditions laid down in the relevant treaties and by the measures adopted to give them effect. On 8 November 2012 the Vilnius Regional Court left the lower court’s decision unchanged. The regional court considered that the only real difficulty the applicant could have experienced was the need to show a copy of her Lithuanian marriage certificate with an apostille appended, together with her Lithuanian passport, when she needed prove her identity. The necessity to show two documents was not so disproportionate as to allow the court to disregard the domestic regulation in respect of how forenames and surnames were to be written in Lithuania. The court also noted that the applicant had managed to obtain social security documents, a driver’s licence, and insurance documents in Austria, wherein her surname had been spelled “Wittib”. That demonstrated that in her daily life in Austria she mostly did not have problems in identifying her and her husband as a family. There was no serious administrative, professional or personal inconvenience such as to raise an issue under the European Union law in this case. The applicant then lodged an appeal on points of law, arguing that there had been a breach of Article 8 of the Convention and a breach of Article 21 of TFEU. She submitted a letter of 14 December 2012 from the Lithuanian Inhabitants’ Registry Service ( Gyventojų registro tarnyba ) to the effect that in 2012 there were twenty-four forenames and ninety-nine surnames in that registry containing the letter “W”. On that basis the applicant claimed that the authorities’ stated aim of protecting the Lithuanian language clearly had not been genuine and in her case had also been disproportionate. She reiterated her request for the matter to be referred to the European Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling. The Ministry of Justice noted that the database of the Lithuanian Inhabitants’ Registry contained the names of not only Lithuanian citizens, but also of foreigners residing in Lithuania, and that the forenames or surnames containing the letter “W” were thus not necessarily those of Lithuanian citizens. By a final ruling of 17 July 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the lower ‑ instance courts’ conclusions. The Supreme Court also had regard to the Constitutional Court’s interpretation of 6   November 2009, whereby the latter held that if a citizen so wished, his or her forename or surname could be transcribed in non-Lithuanian alphabet letters in the “other entries” section ( kitų įrašų skyrius ) of his or her Lithuanian passport (see the “Relevant domestic law” part below). The Supreme Court nevertheless observed that as at the date of its decision no legal mechanism had been set up for transcribing a person’s forename or surname in non-Lithuanian alphabet letters (“W”, in the case in question) in the “other entries” section of Lithuanian passport. Accordingly, in the absence of such legal regulation, it was not possible to grant, by a court decision, the applicant’s request to have her surname written in non-Lithuanian alphabet letters. The Supreme Court also relied on the European Court of Justice judgment in case C‑391/09 (see the “Relevant European Union law and practice” part below), and considered that the questions arising in the applicant’s case were similar to those already examined by the European Court of Justice and therefore did not require a fresh referral for a preliminary ruling. Furthermore, the Supreme Court considered that the difficulties experienced by the applicant in the instant case were proportionate to the aim of protecting the Lithuanian language. As to Article 8 of the Convention, the Supreme Court acknowledged that that provision did apply to the applicant’s complaints. However, the Supreme Court relied on the Court’s decision in Mentzen v. Latvia ((dec.), no.   71074/01, ECHR 2004-XII), which the Lithuanian Supreme Court found to be analogous to the applicant’s situation because the Latvian authorities in Mentzen had sought to preserve the State language, as had the Lithuanian authorities in the applicant’s case. For the Supreme Court, the need for the applicant to provide additional documents besides her passport when trying proving her identity had not been disproportionate in the light of the aim of preserving the Lithuanian language. Lastly, the Supreme Court held that the document from the Lithuanian Inhabitants’ Registry had been inconclusive and, moreover, had been presented only during the proceedings in respect of the appeal on points of law. Since it concerned a question of fact, it could not be examined by the Supreme Court, which examined only questions of law. B.     Relevant domestic law, practice and latest developments 1.     The Constitution and other legal acts Under Article 14 of the Lithuanian Constitution, the State language is Lithuanian. On 31 January 1991 the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania passed a Resolution “On the Writing of Forenames and Surnames in Passports of Citizens of the Republic of Lithuania”. The Resolution held: “1.     In the passports of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania forenames and surnames shall be written in Lithuanian letters according to the Lithuanian entries in existing passports or other personal documents on the basis whereof the passport is issued. 2.     In issued passports of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania the forenames and surnames of persons of non-Lithuanian nationality ( nelietuvių tautybės asmenų ) shall be written in Lithuanian letters. Upon a written request lodged by a citizen by filling out the appropriate form, as stipulated by law, [such citizen’s] forename and surname shall be written:   (a)     according to [their] pronunciation and without conforming to the grammatical rules (without Lithuanian inflections)   or   (b)     according to [their] pronunciation and in conformity with the grammatical rules (by adding Lithuanian inflections).” The Civil Code, in so far as relevant, reads: Article 2.20. Right to a name “1.     Every person shall enjoy the right to a name. The right to a name includes the right to a forename, surname and pseudonym. It is prohibited to gain rights and assume obligations under the cover of another person’s name. ... 3.     The basis and the procedure in respect of a change of name and surname shall be provided by law ...” Article 3.31. The surnames of spouses “Each spouse shall have the right to retain their respective surname or to choose the surname of the other spouse as their common surname or to have a double surname by placing the surname of the other spouse next to their own surname.” Article 3.281. Rules for the registration of civil status acts “Civil status acts shall be registered, restored, changed, supplemented and corrected in accordance with the rules on civil registration as approved by the Minister of Justice.” Article 3.282. Language of records of civil status acts “Records of civil status acts shall be made in Lithuanian. The forename, surname and place names shall be spelled in accordance with the rules of the Lithuanian language.” The Rules on Civil Status Registration, approved by a decision of the Minister of Justice of 19 May 2006, held that when a marriage certificate in respect of a Lithuanian citizen and a foreigner is issued, the Lithuanian citizen’s surname is to be written in accordance with the Lithuanian legal acts regulating how names and family names should be written in documents. The Law on the Identity Card and Passport ( Asmens tapatybės kortelės ir paso įstatymas ) reads that information set out in identity cards and in passports must be entered in Lithuanian characters and in accordance with the rules regulating the writing of forenames and surnames in official documents (Article 5 § 5). 2.     The courts’ practice (a)     The Constitutional Court By a ruling of 21 October 1999, the Constitutional Court held that, taking into account the fact that the passport of a Lithuanian citizen was an official document certifying a permanent legal link between that individual and the State, that is, the citizenship of an individual, and the fact that citizenship relations ( pilietybės santykiai ) belonged to the sphere of public life of the State, the forename and surname of an individual had to be written in the State   language, that is to say in Lithuanian. Otherwise, the constitutional status of the State language would be denied. The Constitutional Court also noted that the sphere in which the use of the State language was compulsory was that of the public life of Lithuania. Thus, it was not compulsory in private life, where people used the language chosen by them. The Supreme Council’s Resolution of 31 January 1991 did not regulate private life but merely prescribed how the forenames and surnames of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania should be written in the passports. Therefore, there were no grounds for maintaining that the Resolution of the Supreme Council contradicted Article   22 of the Constitution, which protected the right to respect for family life. On 6   November 2009 the Constitutional Court, at the request of the Seimas, interpreted its earlier ruling of 21 October 1999 and answered the Seimas’ hypothetical question of whether, if a citizen so wished, his or her forename or surname could be transcribed in non-Lithuanian alphabet letters in the “other entries” section of his or her Lithuanian passport. The Constitutional Court held that it was within the discretionary powers of the Seimas to establish that a person’s forename and surname could be transcribed in non-Lithuanian alphabet letters in the “other entries” section of his or her Lithuanian passport. Should the Seimas choose to provide for such a possibility, it had to adopt appropriate legislation specifying the basis and criteria for such transcriptions. Even so, the Seimas should take into account the fact that Lithuanian language, like absolute majority of other European languages, is based on the Latin alphabet. In any case, the main page of the passport would still contain the citizen’s name and family name in Lithuanian letters. This would not be in breach of the constitutional principle that the State language is Lithuanian. On 14 January 2010 the Lithuanian Government drew up an explanatory report ( aiškinamasis raštas ) regarding the proposal to amend Article 3.282 of the Civil Code. The Government noted that a forename and surname ( asmenvardis ) formed part of a person’s identity and that changing a person’s forename or surname as they had been transcribed in another State could therefore not only breach human rights but also create obstacles to that person migrating from one State to another for work or personal reasons, because he or she would encounter additional problems when having to prove his or her identity. The Government considered that forenames and surnames did not have lexical meaning and that forenames and surnames of one language were therefore not part of another language and their spelling should not be changed. In recent years further such explanatory reports have been drawn up by the Government. (b)     The administrative courts In February and March 2017 the Supreme Administrative Court adopted decisions in four cases concerning the writing of children’s surnames using the letters “q”, “w”, and “x” – which are not in the Lithuanian alphabet – in their Lithuanian passports and identity cards after the Lithuanian authorities had refused to issue such documents. The court extensively quoted the relevant case-law of the European Court of Justice and that of the European Court of Human Rights. In particular, on 27   February 2017 in case no.   eA-2413-662/2017 the Supreme Administrative Court emphasised that the legal regulation, as set out by the Supreme Council in 1991, did not correspond to the change in the legal and social context that had taken place after Lithuania had joined the European Union, and that a Lithuanian citizen could also be a citizen of another European Union country. In that particular case a Lithuanian citizen had married a French citizen, and their child had dual – Lithuanian and French – citizenship. In 2004 the child had obtained a Lithuanian birth certificate in which the father’s surname – Jacquet – had been entered and, on the basis of that birth certificate, a Lithuanian passport in which the child’s surname had also been entered as “Jacquet”. In 2016 the Lithuanian authorities had refused to renew the child’s passport with the surname “Jacquet”, noting that Lithuanian alphabet did not have the letter “q”. The Supreme Administrative Court observed that, should the child have to have another surname than that of his parents, difficulties might arise proving their relationship both in the public and in the private spheres. Moreover, the Lithuanian authorities’ refusal to issue the child with a Lithuanian passport containing the letter “q” in the child’s surname “Jacquet” had not been proportionate to the right to respect for private and family life, also because the letter “q” was not exceptional or odd in current social context in Lithuania. In fact, the State Commission on the Lithuanian Language had submitted observations about proposed legislative changes to the Seimas, where it had indicated that the surname of a Lithuanian citizen who had married a foreigner, as well as the surnames of their children, could be written in the letters of the Latin alphabet. On 27 February 2014 the Constitutional Court also held that when the legislature, while establishing the legal regulation governing the writing of the forename and surname of a person in the passport of a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania, needed special knowledge, it could not disregard the official conclusions and position of the State Commission on the Lithuanian Language. The Supreme Administrative Court also considered that the existing legal regulation in Lithuania was not appropriate and that prohibiting the plaintiff’s child from bearing a surname containing the letter “q” in his or her passport would therefore lack a proper legal basis. The Supreme Administrative Court also had regard to the Court’s judgment in Güzel Erdagöz v. Turkey (no.   37483/02, §§ 54 and 55, 21 October 2008), wherein it found that domestic courts’ decisions had not been based on the appropriate legal regulation in respect of how surnames should be written. That being so, but also taking into account the Constitutional Court’s ruling of 6   November 2009 that a Lithuanian passport in any case should contain a forename and surname in the letters used in the Lithuanian alphabet, the Supreme Administrative ordered the Lithuanian authorities to issue the applicants’ child with a Lithuanian passport wherein the surname would be written both in the letters of the Lithuanian alphabet and also as “Jacquet”. On 7 March 2017, in case no.   A-1867-261/2017, the Supreme Administrative Court ordered the Lithuanian authorities to issue the plaintiff, who was a Lithuanian citizen, with a Lithuanian identity card, specifying her surname in the letters of the Lithuanian alphabet but also as “Powel”. Taking into account the principle of separation of powers, the court noted that it was not for the court to indicate in which part of the identity card the plaintiff’s name, as spelled with the letter “w” (which corresponded to the spelling of her name in her Lithuanian marriage certificate) had to be written. The plaintiff in that case had married a foreigner and had taken his name, “Powel”. The Lithuanian authorities initially refused, on the basis of the Supreme Council’s Resolution of 31   January 1991, to issue her with a marriage certificate with the surname “Powel” because it contained the letter “w”, but in July 2015 were ordered to do so by a court decision. At that time, the State Commission on the Lithuanian Language did not object to the plaintiff’s surname being written with the letter “w”. On 7 March 2017 in case no. eA-2176-662/2017 the Supreme Administrative Court examined a similar issue – the Lithuanian authorities’ refusal to issue a Lithuanian passport and identity card to a child in which the spelling of that child’s surname would contain the letter “w”, even though the child’s Lithuanian birth certificate contained that letter. The Supreme Administrative Court held that this refusal, in the light of the Supreme Council’s Resolution of 31   January 1991, had been arbitrary and in breach of the child’s right to respect for his private and family life. The court underlined that the question had not been properly regulated by the domestic laws and that, should the request of the plaintiffs, who were the boy’s parents, be refused, such a refusal would lack proper legal basis and would therefore not correspond to the Constitutional Court’s case-law, according to which a person’s rights could be restricted only by law. The Supreme Administrative Court therefore ordered the Lithuanian authorities to issue the applicants’ child with a Lithuanian passport in which the surname would be written both in the letters of the Lithuanian alphabet but also as “Wardyn”. (c)     The State authorities’ reaction to the administrative courts’ decisions On 4 March 2017 an article entitled “The State is not ready to implement the court decisions on writing non-Lithuanian surnames” appeared on the Internet portal 15min.lt. The Speaker of the Seimas was quoted as stating that that writing forenames and surnames was a pertinent question but that there was no guarantee that the question would be discussed in the Seimas’ spring session. The portal also quoted the representative of the migration authority in Vilnius County ( Vilniaus apskrities Vyriausiojo policijos komsariato Migracijos valdyba ), a State body issuing Lithuanian passports and identity cards in that county, which stated that the above-mentioned unfavourable administrative court decisions could not be executed because the law required that forenames and surnames in official documents be written only in the Lithuanian language. The representative of the migration authority considered that the law ( įstatymas ) had a higher legal value than a court decision. However, the migration authority stated that it would try to address higher institutions about the matter, so that changes in the relevant laws might be proposed under which the migration authority would be able to do everything “lawfully and properly”. Within this context the migration authority also indicated that currently it did not have the technical possibility to issue a Lithuanian passport with non-Lithuanian alphabet letters in the “other entries” section of passports. It would search for possible technical solutions. The Deputy Minister of Justice stated that it was the Seimas that had the ultimate power to authorize the writing of non-Lithuanian surnames in official documents. The Internet portal also quoted the plaintiffs’ representative in the administrative court proceedings. She stated that her clients – the Jacquet and Mickiewicz families – would not agree to the above-mentioned administrative court decisions of February and March 2017, because the record in the “other entries” section did not have equal value to that of the record on the main page of the Lithuanian passport. They also intended to submit an application to the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Committee. That aside, the representative also promised to start new court proceedings if the migration authority refused to issue a passport as ordered by the Supreme Administrative Court. 3.     Recent proposals by the State Commission on the Lithuanian Language On 23 May 2017 the State Commission on the Lithuanian Language, with regard to proposed amendments of legislation, suggested to the Seimas that, in situations such as that of the applicant, forenames and surnames could be written in Latin alphabet letters in the main page of the Lithuanian passport. C.     Relevant European Union law and practice The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, in so far as relevant, reads: Article 18 “Within the scope of application of the Treaties, and without prejudice to any special provisions contained therein, any discrimination on grounds of nationality shall be prohibited. ...” Article 21 “1.     Every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States, subject to the limitations and conditions laid down in the Treaties and by the measures adopted to give them effect. ...” On 12 May 2011 the Court of Justice gave a preliminary ruling in case C ‑ 391/09. The reference has been made in proceedings between, on the one hand, a Lithuanian national, Malgožata Runevič-Vardyn, and her husband, Łukasz   Paweł Wardyn, a Polish national, and on the other hand, the Ministry of Justice, the State Commission on the Lithuanian Language, and the civil registry division at of the Vilnius city municipality. The domestic proceedings concerned the Vilnius city municipality’s refusal to amend the surnames and forenames of the applicants in the main proceedings as they appeared on the certificates of civil status which the civil registry division at of the Vilnius city municipality had issued to them. Regarding the interpretation of Article 21 of TFEU, the European Court of Justice held: “Article 21 TFEU must be interpreted as: –     not precluding the competent authorities of a Member State from refusing, pursuant to national rules which provide that a person’s surnames and forenames may be entered on the certificates of civil status of that State only in a form which complies with the rules governing the spelling of the official national language, to amend, on the birth certificate and marriage certificate of one of its nationals, the surname and forename of that person in accordance with the spelling rules of another Member State; –     not precluding the competent authorities of a Member State from refusing, in circumstances such as those at issue in the main proceedings and pursuant to those same rules, to amend the joint surname of a married couple who are citizens of the Union, as it appears on the certificates of civil status issued by the Member State of origin of one of those citizens, in a form which complies with the spelling rules of that latter State, on condition that that refusal does not give rise, for those Union citizens, to serious inconvenience at administrative, professional and private levels, this being a matter which it is for the national court to decide. If that proves to be the case, it is also for that court to determine whether the refusal to make the amendment is necessary for the protection of the interests which the national rules are designed to secure and is proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued ; –     not precluding the competent authorities of a Member State from refusing, in circumstances such as those at issue in the main proceedings and pursuant to those same rules, to amend the marriage certificate of a citizen of the Union who is a national of another Member State in such a way that the forenames of that citizen are entered on that certificate with diacritical marks as they were entered on the certificates of civil status issued by his Member State of origin and in a form which complies with the rules governing the spelling of the official national language of that latter State.” (Emphasis added by the European Court of Human Rights) COMPLAINTS Under Article 8 of the Convention the applicant complains that the Lithuanian authorities’ refusal to write her surname as “Wittib” in the Lithuanian official documents. She argues that the interference with her rights under Article   8 is disproportionate to the aim pursued by the State of Lithuania of protecting the Lithuanian language. She notes that the letter “W” is contained in the Latin alphabet, unlike some diacritical marks, and considers that it would therefore not be too difficult for the Lithuanian authorities to transcribe her surname in the original language as “Wittib”. The applicant also emphasises that the Lithuanian authorities have long been conscious of this problem and that over the years the Lithuanian Government prepared a number of explanatory reports acknowledging that an issue regarding how to write non-Lithuanian forenames and surnames in Lithuanian documents existed and that current legal regulation in Lithuania merited to be improved. Likewise, in those explanatory reports the Government also acknowledged that a majority of Western and Central European States whose official language or languages are based on the Latin alphabet, but which also have letters with diacritical symbols, have opted to transcribe the forename and surname as written in the official identity document issued by another State and without any changes. For the applicant, legal regulation which does not permit a person to have his or her forename or surname written in the way that it is transcribed in the original language   –   even when both languages use the same Latin alphabet, albeit that some symbols used by the two languages differ   –   is as such disproportionate to the rights protected by Article   8 of the Convention. The applicant also refers to a number of practical life situations in which the discrepancy between the way her surname is written by the Lithuanian authorities in her Lithuanian marriage certificate and in her Lithuanian passport (“Vittib”) on the one hand and in her Austrian documents (“Wittib”) on the other has caused her serious difficulties given that she and her husband had to prove her identity not only by submitting additional documents but also by being forced to explain the applicant’s situation. The applicant also submits that her situation is different from the one that the Court examined in Mentzen . Unlike in that case, the relevant Lithuanian legal instruments do not provide for the possibility to write a person’s surname in original language (for example, as “Wittib”) in a Lithuanian passport or another official document. The applicant also notes that the Convention is a living instrument and that therefore the Court’s decision in Mentzen (adopted in 2004) could be reviewed. She also asks the Court to rule that Lithuanian law does not properly regulate how forenames and surnames should be written in official documents and that therefore it should be amended to comply with Article   8 of the Convention. QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES 1.     Has there been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention on account of the fact that the applicant is not able to have her surname written as “Wittib” in her official Lithuanian documents, in particular, in her Lithuanian marriage certificate and in her Lithuanian passport (see Mentzen v.   Latvia (dec.), no. 71074/01, ECHR 2004-XII, and Güzel Erdagöz v.   Turkey , no.   37483/02, §§ 54 and 55, 21 October 2008; also see and compare Kuharec alias Kuhareca v. Latvia (dec.), no.   71557/01 and Kemal Taşkın and Others v. Turkey , nos. 30206/04 and 7 others, §§ 45-80, 2   February 2010)?   2.     The Government are requested to describe the most recent developments in Lithuanian law as concerns the possibility to transcribe a person’s forename or surname using letters not present in the Lithuanian alphabet in a Lithuanian passport and/or other official documents.