🇧🇪⚖️Wednesdays are increasingly becoming the rule of law days. Hot on the heels of the Commission taking action on Poland, a court in Brussels orders the Belgian government to immediately lift all covid-19 emergency measures or pay a fine for every day of delay in doing so. (1/6)
Reasons? Legality - the measures were introduced by means of decrees of the government, not via law enacted by the parliament. The government is to provide an accurate legal basis for the measures or ... face a not exactly excessive fine of 5k EUR daily, up to 200k EUR. (2/6)
But the real point here is - countries worldwide, including developed, lawful democracies, have resorted to limiting rights and freedoms via secondary legislation. Poland is another example of this practice, as most restrictions are imposed via governmental decrees. (3/6)
Some countries have explicit constitutional rules on what legal acts you have to use to limit human rights. Others are not so clear on this. In Belgium, the practice of ministerial decrees being used as legal basis was previously found to be OK by the Council of State. (4/6)
The Bxl court was less enthusiastic about the practice of using secondary legislation for emergency measures. Judicial oversight is critical in situations like these, but so is ensuring that you don't undermine the legality of pandemic response by using wrong tools. (5/6)
For more on Belgium's response to covid-19 and its impact on the rule of law and human rights, see the excellent contribution to @DemocracyR @Verfassungsblog @reconnectEU #PowerandPandemic symposium by Maaike De Ridder: verfassungsblog.de/belgiums-accor… (6/6)
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