One of Article 3 of the draft law to so wide a range of persons is not justified and
violates the principle of proportionality. In addition, the draft law contains an obvious
contradiction: the law is supposed to become effective as of 1 July 2009, whereas the
draft law annotation indicates that the enactment of the law from this date is unfeasible
(see Case materials, vol. 8, pp. 53f).
The legislator’s task is to find a compromise between competing legislative-political
ends, especially between the legislative and constitutional principles. For example,
when taking a decision concerning specific social reliefs, one must find a compromise
between the fundamental principles of social statehood and enactment of economical
State budget policy (see Cipeliuss R. Par tiesisko apsverumu racionalu strukturesanu.
Likums un Tiesibas, 2000, No. 4, p. 112).
The Constitutional Court concluded that the proposed alternatives to the impugned
provisions cannot be regarded as viable and accepted, for it was simply impossible to
draft adequate alternative proposals in such a short period of time. Likewise, it was
impossible to give careful and detailed consideration to such major issues as the
potential economic effect and social consequences of these alternative solutions within
a few days. Consequently, the Constitutional Court had no grounds for deeming the
alternative solutions – which lack the necessary justification and analysis of economic
and social consequences – as sufficiently well-considered alternatives to the impugned
provisions.
Due to haste and insufficient involvement of experts, the legislator could not duly
consider alternative solutions and work out a lenient transition. Among other things,
the fact that the Disbursement Law had to be corrected urgently is also indicative of
the legislator’s inconsiderate action. That is, the disbursement restrictions included in
the Disbursement Law pertained to old-age and service pensions. As a consequence,
those persons, who had reached the retirement age while still receiving disability
pension, received it in full amount, whereas those persons, who had been granted oldage pension instead of disability pension, received it in restricted amount. In other
words, the Disbursement Law provided obviously different treatment for persons who
were the recipients of disability pension on the one hand (the reduction of pension not
applied), and persons who received old-age pension instead of disability pension on
the other hand (the reduction of pension applied) (see the Law Amendment to the Law
55
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