o a market economy. Its economic well-being was further jeopardised by the financial crisis of 1998 and the sharp devaluation of the national currency. Even though it has achieved relative prosperity and wealth in recent years, the Court agrees that defining budgetary priorities in terms of favouring expenditure on pressing social issues to the detriment of claims with a purely pecuniary nature was a legitimate aim in the public interest.
(c) Striking of a fair balance between the general interest and the applicant's rights
67. The Court notes at the outset that, by contrast with the situation obtaining in the above-mentioned Broniowski case and other similar cases, for instance, Ramadhi and Others v. Albania (No. 38222/02, 13 November 2007) and {Denes} and Others v. Romania (No. 25862/03, 3 March 2009), the applicant had not suffered an initial taking or loss of property which the State had undertaken to compensate for. The bonds of which the applicant was the holder were given to agricultural workers as an additional incentive to encourage them to sell their produce to the State, which had paid for it at fixed prices. Nor could these bonds be used as legal tender or a money substitute: they certified the bearer's right to purchase goods in high demand but the buyer still had to pay the full purchase price in cash or otherwise. These particular features of the bonds may be relevant for an assessment of the level of compensation which was eventually offered to the bond-holders, since the Court has already considered that a substantially reduced amount of compensation may be acceptable in a situation in which the compensatory entitlement does not arise from any previous taking of individual property by the respondent State but is designed to mitigate the effects of a taking or loss of property not attributable to the State (see Broniowski, cited above, §§ 182 and 186). However, the Court reiterates that the applicant's complaints in the instant case do not concern the amount of compensation recoverable under the Buyout Act passed in 2009; its grievances stemmed from the fact that, in passing the Commodity Bonds Act, the Russian State had voluntarily taken upon itself an obligation towards bearers of the bonds that had not been discharged for many years owing to the absence of a legislative framework for its implementation.
68. The rule of law underlying the Convention and the principle of lawfulness in Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 require States not only to respect and apply, in a foreseeable and consistent manner, the laws they have enacted, but also, as a corollary of this duty, to ensure the legal and practical conditions for their implementation (see Broniowski, cited above, §§ 147 and 184). In the context of the present case, those principles required the Russian State to fulfil in good time, in an appropriate and consistent manner, the legislative promises it had made in respect of claims arising out of the Urozhay-90 bonds. In particular, it was incumbent on the authorities to legislate on the conditions for implementation of the bond-bearers' entitlement with a view to satisfying the undertaking that had been created through the enactment of the Commodity Bonds Act. The Court is not persuaded by the Government's submission that the recognition of the bonds as part of the State's internal debt had been "mistaken". Even if this were so, no explanation was offered as to why that alleged mistake had not been promptly identified and corrected through an appropriate amendment of the Commodity Bonds Act. It could not have been due to a mere oversight or oblivion because the application of section 1 of the Commodity Bonds Act in the part concerning the Urozhay-90 bonds had been explicitly and repeatedly suspended for many years in the successive laws on the federal budget.
69. During the entire period between the enactment of the Commodity Bonds Act in 1995 an
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