On 9 June, President of Latvia Egils Levits sent Electronic Communications bill back to Saeima for reconsideration. The bill was adopted by parliament on 2 June 2022. According to Egils Levits, some of the provisions that MPs decided to keep in the bill are incompatible with European Union (EU) law and case-law of the Court of Justice of the European. Bill endorsed by legislators contains some of the current provisions that were automatically included in the new body of law without correcting obvious legal inconsistencies and against advice of various competent authorities.
Statement by the President of Latvia says that legislature’s decision to pass the bill may very likely lead to a situation where the new law may, on some instances, contradict the provisions of Article 96 of Satversme, which safeguards the rights to respect for private life and prevents simultaneous collection of data about all users of electronic communication technologies, all electronic communication services and same time periods. ‘Latvia is a democracy that respects the rule of law. It is inappropriate to assume or suspect all citizen of possible wrongdoing and ‘monitor them preventively’ just because responsible authorities have failed to regulate data collection and storage in a way that respects the legitimate concerns of the state and the society, while also safeguarding individual rights to data privacy,’ President Levits indicated in his comments.
Note sent by Egils Levits to the Saeima also indicates that parliament has ignored legal opinions provided by a number of competent agencies, which recommended MPs to focus on compatibility of the new framework with EU laws. ‘If we want our laws to be good, legislators should carefully consider these legal positions and essentially follow the advice given,’ President reminded. ‘Ombudsman, Saeima Legal Bureau, Ministry of Justice and Data State Inspection provided clear and well-considered positions on why this law would not conform with EU laws. Their recommendations were not implemented and that means I cannot sign this bill into law,’ Egils Levits explained.
According to him, total monitoring of people and their communication, which would occur once meta data about all communication between all people begins to be collected, is incompatible with democracy and rule of law.
President urges Saeima to change the Article 99, 100 and 101 of the Electronic Communications Law on data collection and storage in a way that achieves balance between personal data protection concerns and purpose for which data is collected and processed by public institutions. Egils Levits also reminds Saeima that provisions of the law must comply with relevant EU laws and latest CJEU case-law. President of Latvia also asked legislators to be more mindful of expert opinions and implement their recommendations on how to provide compliance with EU laws in principle.