4.  The applicants’ personal details are listed in Annex I to this judgment. 5.  The applicants were serviceman employed by the Ministry of Defence (Ministarstvo obrane Republike Hrvatske). In 1996, 1997 and 1998 the applicants occasionally participated in demining operations in the newly liberated territories in Croatia. 6.  On the basis of the Decision of the Minister of Defence of 18 September 1995 (see “Relevant domestic law”, below), they were entitled to a special daily allowance for such work. 7.  Since the allowances had not been paid to them, on 21 May 2002 each applicant brought a separate civil action against the State in the Knin Municipal Court (Općinski sud u Kninu), seeking payment of the unpaid allowances. 8.  The State responded that their actions were time-barred because the three-year limitation period for employment-related claims had expired. 9.  In reply, the applicants argued that on several occasions they had asked their commanding officer why the allowances had not been paid. Their commanding officer had made enquiries of his superior, who had then contacted the General Staff of the Croatian Armed Forces (Glavni stožer Oružanih snaga Republike Hrvatske). Eventually, the applicants had been informed through their commanding officer that their claims were not being disputed and that they would be paid once the funds for that purpose had been allocated in the State budget. Relying on that information, the applicants argued that the State had acknowledged the debt and that the running of the statutory limitation period had thus been interrupted. 10.  On 12 and 14 December 2005 the Knin Municipal Court ruled in favour of the State and dismissed the applicants’ actions. It held that in accordance with the internal regulations of the Ministry of Defence the only person authorised to acknowledge the debt on behalf of the Ministry before the applicants had brought their actions had been the head of its Central Finance Department and his superiors. Therefore, the repeated declarations of the applicants’ commanding officer to the applicants, after making enquiries of his superiors up to the level of the General Staff of the Croatian Armed Forces, that their claims were not in dispute and that the allowances would be paid once funds had been allocated in the budget for that purpose, had not constituted acknowledgement of the debt capable of interrupting the running of the statutory limitation period. 11.  On 3 and 10 April 2006 the Šibenik County Court (Županijski sud u Šibeniku) dismissed the applicants’ appeals and upheld the first-instance judgments endorsing the reasons given therein. 12.  The applicants’ subsequent constitutional complaints were dismissed by the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Republike Hrvatske) in the period between 18 September 2006 and 10 April 2008. The Constitutional Court’s decisions were served on the applicants’ representative on the dates indicated in Annex I to this judgment.