At the time of the registration of its list of candidates the party supplied the Central Electoral Commission with all the documents required, including a copy of the certificate attesting to the fact that the applicant knew the State's official language – Latvian.
The examiner then drew up a report to the effect that the applicant did not have an adequate command of the official language at the "third level", the highest of the three categories of competence defined in Latvian regulations and the one then required for eligibility in parliament.
The applicant was represented before ECtHR first by I. Oziša, member of Latvian Human Rights Committee, and later by W. Bowring, a British barrister.
Thus the full responsibility for assessing the applicant's linguistic knowledge was left to a single civil servant, who had exorbitant power in the matter.
Considering the Riga Regional Court's judgment, ECHR held that its sole basis was the certificate drawn up by the State Language Centre after the examination in issue; it did not rule on the other evidence in the file.