2.4. The Applicants stated that, when determining the compliance of the
impugned provisions with Article 109 of the Constitution, the following should be
considered: if the state has included a fundamental right in the Constitution, it has an
obligation to implement it.
When adopting any changes in the sphere of social rights, the state has to
provide for a certain period of time, so that the affected persons can duly prepare
themselves for these changes. In this case, the preparation time was just two weeks. It
was noted even in the draft law annotation submitted by the Cabinet of Ministers that
the adoption of the Disbursement Law from 1 July 2009 is not possible since there will
be pension and allowance overpayments for the period from 1 July 2009 until the
introduction of the new procedure.
Latvia has ratified a number of international agreements in the area of social
rights. The conclusion that follows from these documents is that the legal provisions
that provide a broader nature of human rights and better possibilities for human rights
protection should be preferred. The obligation to protect and provide for the human
rights to a certain extent does not deny the state the possibility to amend the provisions
for implementation of the respective human rights, however, the respective
amendments cannot restrict the nature of human rights.
Taking into account the above, the Applicants asked the Constitutional court to
declare Paragraph One of Article 2 of the Disbursement Law as unconformable with
Articles 1 and 109 of the Constitution and Paragraph One of Article 3 as
unconformable with Articles 1, 91, 105 and 109 of the Constitution as well as to
declare both impugned provisions invalid as of the moment of their adoption.
3. The institution that passed the Contested Act – the Saeima – did not
agree with the arguments of the Applicants and pleaded the Constitutional Court to
adjudge the Applications groundless and to reject them. The Saeima argued as follows.
3.1. When determining the conformity of the impugned provisions with the
Constitution, factors related to the economic situation in the country and resources of
the State budget of Latvia cannot be ignored. Since 2008, economic development has
considerably deteriorated. The drop in Gross Domestic Product in the second quarter
of 2009 was 19.6 percent in comparison with the same period of the previous year.
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