A case on the budget planning procedure of several independent institutions has been initiated
The First Panel of the Constitutional Court has initiated a case “On Compliance of Item 5 of Section 19 of the Law on Budget and Financial Management”, the Second Part of Section 44 of the Law on the State Audit Office and the Second Part of Section 19 of the Ombudsman Law with Article 1, Article 83 and Article 87 of the Satversme (Constitution) of the Republic of Latvia”.
The contested norm provides that the budgetary requests of the chancellery of the President, the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the State Audit Office and the Office of the Ombudsman shall not be amended, up to the submission of the draft budget law to the Cabinet, without the consent of the submitter of the request.
The applicant, the State Audit Office indicates that the contested norms provide that the Cabinet of Ministers has the right to amend budgetary requests of the independent institutions without the consent of the applicant, which infringes financial and functional independency of the institutions. The applicant holds that such procedure does not comply with the principle of separation of powers. It is possible to observe this principle only if this is the legislator (Saeima) that assesses budget requests of the independent institutions provided that all principles of a democratic state enshrined in the Satversme are observed during the assessment procedure.
Consequently, the State Audit Office asks to recognize the contested norms as non-compliant with Article 1 (Latvia is a democratic republic), Article 83 (Judges shall be independent and subject only to the law) and Article 87 of the Satversme (The State Audit Office shall be an independent collegial institution).
The Saeima was asked to provide, before 18 March 2010, a reply on factual circumstances of the case and legal justification thereof. The term for preparation of the case is 18 June 2010.
Linked case: 2010-06-01