GORZELIK AND OTHERS v. POLAND JUDGMENT 31 Court recognises that, for the reasons explained above, in the area under consideration it may be difficult to frame laws with a high degree of precision. It may well even be undesirable to formulate rigid rules. The Polish State cannot, therefore, be criticised for using only a general statutory categorisation of minorities and leaving interpretation and application of those notions to practice. 70. Consequently, the Court does not consider that leaving to the authorities a discretion to determine the applicable criteria with regard to the concept of “registered associations of national minorities” underlying section 5 of the 1993 Elections Act was, as the applicants alleged, tantamount to granting them an unlimited and arbitrary power of appreciation. As regards the registration procedure, it was both inevitable and consistent with the adjudicative role vested in them for the national courts to be left with the task of interpreting the notion of “national minority”, as distinguished from “ethnic minority” within the meaning of the Constitution, and assessing whether the applicants' association qualified as an “organisation of a national minority” (see paragraph 65 above). 71. In reviewing the relevant principles, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal took into consideration all the statutory provisions applicable to associations and national minorities as well as social factors and other legal factors, including all the legal consequences that registering the applicants' association in the form they proposed might entail (see paragraphs 32 and 36 above). Contrary to what the applicants have alleged, those courts do not appear to have needlessly transformed the registration procedure into a dispute over the concept of Silesian nationality. Rather, it was the statement in paragraph 30 of the memorandum of association that made it necessary to consider that issue in the proceedings (see paragraphs 22, 25 and 28 above). The applicants must have been aware, when that paragraph was drafted, that the courts would have no alternative but to interpret the notion of “national minority” as it applied in their case. Having regard to the foregoing, the Court is satisfied that the Polish law applicable in the present case was formulated with sufficient precision, for the purposes of paragraph 2 of Article 11 of the Convention, to enable the applicants to regulate their conduct. 2. Legitimate aim (a) The Chamber's judgment 72. The Chamber found that the Polish authorities had sought to avoid the association using a name which the public might find misleading as it established a link to a non-existent nation. It also found that they had acted in order to protect other, similar ethnic groups whose rights might be affected by the registration of the association. The Chamber consequently