GORZELIK AND OTHERS v. POLAND JUDGMENT 15 cannot be regarded as a national minority and at circumventing the provisions of the 1993 Elections Act and other statutes conferring particular privileges on national minorities. Granting such a request could lead to granting unwarranted rights to the association in question. This would, moreover, give it an advantage in relation to other regional or ethnic organisations. In these circumstances, in accordance with section 14 of the Law on associations and Article 58 of the Civil Code, read in conjunction with Articles 386 § 1 and 13 of the Code of Civil Procedure and section 8 of the Law on associations, the appeal must be allowed.” 3. The proceedings before the Supreme Court 33. On 3 November 1997 the applicants lodged an appeal on points of law (kasacja) with the Supreme Court (Sąd Najwyższy). They alleged that the Katowice Court of Appeal had wrongly interpreted the relevant provisions of the Law on associations and that the impugned decision had contravened Article 84 of the Constitution, Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 11 of the Convention. Their arguments are summarised as follows: “Since a refusal to register an association could be justified only if an activity specified in the memorandum of association was banned by the law, the principal issue to be determined by the Court of Appeal was whether the memorandum of the applicants' association complied with the statutory requirements. That was clearly not the case and the court's fear that the registration of the applicants' association would in future lead to discrimination against other national or ethnic minorities was based on mere speculation. In any event, the Law on associations [in sections 8(2), 25 et seq.] provided for various means whereby the activity of an association could be supervised by the competent State authorities or, in the event that its activity was unlawful, the association could be dissolved. However, the Court of Appeal, instead of assessing the formal requirements of the registration, decided at the outset that the core issue in the proceedings was to establish whether a Silesian nation existed. It consequently went on to lay down its own arbitrary and controversial definition of 'nation' and 'national minority', and finally concluded that there was no 'Silesian nation'. It did so without any effort to obtain expert evidence in respect of such an important matter.” 34. On 27 November 1997 the Governor of Katowice filed a pleading in reply to the applicants' appeal on points of law. The relevant arguments are summarised as follows: “The refusal to register the applicants' association was fully justified. In the course of the proceedings at first instance, the Governor eventually proposed that the applicants amend paragraph 30 of the memorandum of association and alter the name of their association by deleting the word 'nationality'. Those arguments were based on section 10(1) (i) of the Law on associations, which provides that a memorandum of association should enable the association in question to be differentiated from other associations. This means that the name of an association should not be misleading. Since the requirement set out in the above-mentioned section was not complied with, the refusal to register the applicants' association was justified under section 14(1).