President of the State Egils Levits and the President of the Constitutional Court Sanita Osipova talk about the challenges in strengthening the rule of law
On Tuesday, 3 November, the President of the Constitutional Court Sanita Osipova, for the first time after her election to the office, made an official visit to the President of the State Egils Levits. During the meeting, the officials discussed issues related to increasing the effectiveness of the execution of the Constitutional Court’s judgments, as well as other important aspects in connection with the strengthening of the rule of law in Latvia.
Congratulating the newly elected President of the Constitutional Court Sanita Osipova on her assumption of the high office, the State President Egils Levits stressed: “The Constitutional Court is that judiciary body in Latvia which enjoys the greatest confidence of the public; this comes with high responsibility and the additional duty to keep this status”.
The President of the Constitutional Court thanked the State President for the opportunity to meet and expressed appreciation of the dialogue between the two constitutional bodies, which had been successfully established and reinforced in the recent years.
The President of the Court drew the State President’s attention to the advisability and relevance of starting a discussion on the necessity to create a mechanism to control the process of executing the Constitutional Court’s judgments and to monitor the integration of the Court’s case-law findings into laws and regulations. Sanita Osipova said: “Ours is a good country. The Constitutional Court’s judgments are indeed implemented, the matter is about a timelier start and a better-quality process of such implementation. It should commence immediately after the judgment comes into force. It is important that the judgments be implemented both in letter and in spirit.”
The President of the State found the proposal commendable, though stressed that a wider discussion on it should take place involving all branches of state power. Sanita Osipova suggested that the talks on this topic continue 11 December this year, during the Constitutional ideas think tank organised by the Court. The think tank will bring together representatives of all constitutional bodies, as well as the former Presidents of the Constitutional Court. The participants will discuss possible solutions for increasing the effectiveness of the execution of the Constitutional Court judgments. This is necessary for the people to feel secure in their country and confident that the rule of law is observed in this respect.
The State President and the President of the Constitutional Court also talked about the ways to strengthen the Council for the Judiciary. Sanita Osipova expressed the opinion that the Council should have wider powers to represent judges’ interests and to decide on the issues that are important for the whole judicial branch.
In speaking about the observable trends in the work of the Constitutional Court, the President of the Court emphasized that Latvia needed a new sentence execution law which would be aimed at resocialization. In the past ten years, the Constitutional Court had heard seven cases regarding the compatibility of the Sentence Execution Code (Sodu izpildes kodekss) with the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia. In all the cases, the respective provisions of the Code had been held incompatible with the Constitution.
Towards the end of the talk, the State President and the President of the Court discussed several ideas that would be worthy of consideration by the working group formed under the Chancery of the President of Latvia to coordinate the plan of events in celebration of the centenary of the Constitution in 2022.
See photos of the meeting here.