GORZELIK AND OTHERS v. POLAND JUDGMENT 27 left to the authorities was practically unlimited and the rules they would apply were unpredictable. 57. Furthermore, the authorities had used the registration procedure under the Law on associations as a means of denying them a minority status. Yet that procedure could not act as an instrument for determining whether or not a national minority existed. It was purely formal and could serve only the purposes for which it was designed, namely to determine whether registration was admissible under section 14 of the Law on associations, and whether, as prescribed by section 16, the memorandum of association was in conformity with the law and the members satisfied the statutory requirements. 58. The applicants asserted that they had fulfilled all those conditions. Consequently, under the relevant Law, the authorities were obliged to register the association and, as the Katowice Regional Court rightly held, there had been no legal basis for their refusal to do so. However, instead of focusing on the requirements for registration, the higher courts had engaged in speculation about whether they intended to stand in elections and had tried the case as a dispute over the existence of Silesian nationality. In the absence of any legal definition of the concept of “national minority” or criteria for determining what might qualify as a “national minority”, that approach had deprived the applicants of the ability to foresee what legal rules would be applied in their case. (ii) The Government 59. The Government fully agreed with the Chamber's opinion and added that the relevant provisions were sufficiently clear, precise and accessible to allow the applicants to determine their conduct. Consequently, they met the standard of “foreseeability” of a “law” under the Convention. 60. At the hearing before the Grand Chamber, the Government acknowledged that Polish legislation, as it stood at the material time, had not defined the notions of “national” and “ethnic” minority, in particular for the purposes of electoral law. That, in their view, did not alter the position since it could not be said that the State had a duty to provide a definition. The fact that some States had chosen – either in their legislation or in their declarations under the Framework Convention – to give descriptive or enumerative definitions of minorities did not mean that the Polish State had to do likewise. 61. Indeed, in Poland national or ethnic minorities could be, and were, identified by reference to various legal sources such as the bilateral treaties on good neighbourliness and friendly cooperation it had entered into with Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine and other neighbouring states. They were also recognised in legal instruments, a specific example being the official report on the implementation of the Framework Convention, submitted by the Polish government to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in