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On Wednesday, the TTK decided to ask the Seimas Board for proposals to the Government in order to implement the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the case R. Paksas v. Lithuania.
At the request of the Commission, it is proposed to request the Government to form a working group to evaluate the constitution of the Constitution currently being discussed in the Seimas in relation to R. Paksas and to present proposals for possible other alternative amendments to the Constitution.
The Committee notes that, since 25 September 2014, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which oversees the execution of the ECtHR judgments, has been subject to increased enforcement supervision.
In more than four years, even after amendments to the Constitution were not passed due to the post-impeachment candidacy, an international sanction was applied to Lithuania for the first time.
A provisional resolution was adopted at the Human Rights Meeting of the Committee of Ministers in December 2018, which means that Lithuania ignores a substantial part of its international obligations derived from its membership of the Council of Europe, the obligation to unconditionally implement the decisions of the ECHR.
In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the current ban on lifetime participation in the Seimas elections for the dissolved president Paksas was disproportionate.
Without in any way adopting constitutional amendments that would open the way for R. Paksas to the elections, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which oversees the execution of the Strasbourg court decisions, has applied the so-called enhanced supervision procedure to Lithuania.
To implement the decision of the ECHR, a decade ago a working group on legal alternatives to the implementation of said decision had already been formed in the Government, but so far there have not been enough votes in the Seimas to approve amendments to the Constitution.
The amendment to article 74 of the Constitution currently under consideration in the Seimas proposes to allow people removed by impeachment to run for the Seimas after a ten-year hiatus. However, a person expelled by political trial could not be elected president, occupy other positions, the beginning of which is related to the taking of the oath provided for in the Constitution, such as minister, prime minister, judge.
R. Paksas was removed from office as president in 2004 and since then he cannot be elected head of the country or member of the Seimas.
The Constitutional Court recognized that R. Paksas had broken his oath and had seriously violated the Constitution by exceptionally granting Lithuanian citizenship to his financial sponsor Yuri Borisov.
The court has clarified that a person who has lost his position through impeachment cannot live in a position that requires a constitutional oath. According to him, to modify this provision, it is necessary to modify the Constitution.
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