HS analysis|The opinion of the Constitutional Law Committee is a clever structure that leaves the most difficult problems to be solved by the Administrative Committee, writes political journalist Joona Aaltonen.
Parliamentary On Tuesday, the Constitutional Law Committee gave the green light to the so-called “conversion law”, under which people could be temporarily prevented from applying for international protection at Finland’s borders.
The Constitutional Law Committee demanded a few changes to the government’s bill, with which efforts would be made to clarify the law and improve the legal protection of land aspirants.
They have no essential influence on the basic solutions of the presentation, even if the committee Johannes Koskinen (sd) called the changes significant at Tuesday’s press conference.
The government the proposal received exceptional criticism in public from every legal scholar consulted by the Constitutional Law Committee even before the committee’s statement was made public.
The vast majority of legal scholars consulted by the Constitutional Law Committee considered the problems of the bill to be so significant and fundamental that they cannot be corrected in parliamentary proceedings. Despite that, the law will proceed next to the administrative committee with the constitutional committee’s wishes for changes.
How is this possible?
The Constitutional Committee the task is to assess the constitutionality of the bills and the relationship with international human rights treaties. It should make this assessment independently and only on legal grounds.
The committee consults legal scholars to support its statements and reports, but it does not have to follow all the views it hears. It can base its opinion on the jurists it considers the most legally persuasive.
In the case of the emergency law, the chairman of the committee Heikki Vestman (kok) stated directly at Tuesday’s press conference that the committee’s line of interpretation is supported especially by the supreme legality supervisors, the Chancellor of Justice Tuomas Pöystin and the parliamentary ombudsman Petri Jääskeläinen and Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Helsinki Mikael Hidénin to the statements made.
Those in question in addition to legal scholars, the Constitutional Law Committee decided to rely on the legislative history of the current Constitution and the Constitutional Law Committee’s previous interpretation practice. From these, it dug up individual examples that support the enactment of the exception law as a limited exception.
The committee’s statement is mainly based on, for example, the 2001 temporary trial law on the juvenile punishment experiment, which the constitutional committee passed, even though it found a susceptibility to “monitoring evaluations based on human rights treaties”.
The Constitutional Law Committee considered this to prove that a similar solution has been made in the past and it can be made now as well. The experimental law at the time was considered to be in conflict with the individual’s legal protection. According to jurists, the now enacted exception law is in conflict with the right to life and the prohibition of torture and the prohibition of refoulement, none of which should be deviated from even in a war situation.
At the same time, the committee failed to take a position, for example, on the grounds on which Finland’s national security has been seriously endangered, even though national security is the main basis for deviating from basic and human rights.
Also in the statements, the committee particularly focused on those points where it was stated that the enactment of the law is possible as a limited exception. This is especially evident in the statement of Hidén, the only legal scholar who even gave the project a yellow light.
At the same time, however, the committee ignored the parts of Hidén’s statement where he states that international human rights obligations are valid regardless of the exceptional law.
“Finland cannot use national legislation to make exceptions to complying with international human rights obligations,” Hidén emphasized afterwards in an interview with HS.
Law of exception the problems multiply with EU law. The Constitutional Law Committee did not take a more detailed position on that, because it belongs to the administrative committee’s desk.
EU law, for example the procedural directive, provides for the granting of international protection at a level that binds Finland directly. Union law takes precedence over national law, so it is valid regardless of what the Constitutional Law Committee in Finland decides to pronounce.
According to the Constitutional Committee’s statement, the Administrative Committee must now clarify the relationship of the exception law to EU legislation and make changes to some points that are problematic in terms of international human rights treaties.
If the administrative committee does not come up with some imaginative solution to solve these questions, the border guard will have to decide at the eastern border in the future whether he will follow the exemption law or the EU law and international agreements that precede it.
Technically the opinion of the constitutional committee is cleverly constructed. For this, the chairman of the committee, Vestman, is especially to be thanked, who is known in the parliament for being able to find some kind of line of interpretation for almost any question from the previous statements of the constitutional law committee.
However, it only solves the question of whether the law can be enacted. The question of whether the law will have any practical effects, even if enacted, is left up in the air.
The exception law is justified in the political debate by the fact that it gives a signal effect to Russia. The signaling effect may be the only effect that the law would ever have.
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