Parliament Speaker: No Need to Declare State of Emergency for Now

ZAGREB, March 28, 2020 – Commenting on the possibility of declaring a state of emergency over the outbreak of the coronavirus, Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković said on Friday that the parliament would do it if necessary, but that currently other constitutional provisions enabled normal work.

Asked if the government would accept the Opposition’s amendments to a bill on the electronic tracking of persons in self-isolation, Jandroković said that he believed the law should not be passed by a two-thirds majority.

The purpose of the law is not to abolish freedoms or curtail democracy, but rather to prevent the spreading of the disease, he said.

The purpose of the law is to protect citizens and their health, but considering the objections, we are trying to reach the broadest possible consensus, and the bill will therefore have to pass a second reading, Jandroković said in an interview with RTL.

As for the Opposition’s amendments to the government-sponsored bill, he said: “We’ll discuss them. We have taken some time to make the best possible law, but the key issue at the moment is protection of people’s health.”

As for the possible activation of Article 17 of the Constitution (which concerns restriction of human rights and freedoms in time of war or a major natural disaster), Jandroković said that the Constitutional Court reacts with a report in the event of a breach of the constitution, and that since it did not react to the legal situation at hand, he believes that the constitution was not violated.

For the time being, we have resorted to Article 16 (rights may be restricted only by law and restrictions must be proportionate to the need to protect people’s lives), Article 32 (restriction of movement) and Article 50 (restrictions on property or dispossession with compensation, and restriction of entrepreneurial freedoms in exceptional cases) and it will stay so until further notice, Jandroković said among other things.

More coronavirus news can be found in the Lifestyle section.

 

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