CYIL vol. 12 (2021)

Birutė Pranevičienė – Violeta Vasiliauskienė – Harald Scheu CYIL 12 (2021) do not contact their family members and remain in one household as required by other rules of quarantine. Thus, it could be considered as a non-proportional measure in the aim to stop the pandemic. Furthermore, the measures were changed very often, sometimes every week or even more often. Sometimes in Lithuania, the public communication would precede the official restrictions, and sometimes the measures that were promised were not enacted or changed in what was actually adopted in the legal act. Thus, this ensuing uncertainty could be considered as infringing the principle of legitimate expectations of persons and the principle of legal certainty. 45 It needs to be noted that the science behind the spread of COVID-19, and statistical data available to the states, in our opinion, would have allowed the prediction of the trends of the spread of the virus and enact measures for longer periods of time that were more stable, thus ensuring legal certainty for persons. 4.3 Judicial measures The analysis of judicial practice regarding measures enacted to counter the COVID-19 pandemic indicates that the courts have not yet carried out a comprehensive analysis of the measures applied and their legality and proportionality. The cases brought before the constitutional courts of both states by individuals were not admitted due to lack of actual infringements of their rights. The decision regarding the declaration of the national emergency was adopted in Czech Constitutional Court which, by a narrow majority, rejected the motion to declare the decisions of the Government unconstitutional due to procedural reasons. The practice of the administrative courts focused mostly on the legality of the acts in question (the proper legal base for legal acts in the Czech cases and the appointment of the head of the operations centre as being not in accordance with the legislation in force in Lithuania), and did not focus on the proportionality of the restrictive measures. Secondly, it must be noted that the administrative courts were unable to analyse the legality of the fast-changing acts as they were out of validity very promptly, and thus precluded the analysis of the legality of a normative legal act. The only venue to analyse an act that was no longer in force is an action on behalf of a particular person claiming that their rights were infringed by that regulation, otherwise judicial review is not possible. Thus, in such rapidly changing and challenging situation for the whole legal order, the courts seem to be somewhat incapable to perform their functions. Conclusions A brief analysis of anti-COVID measures in the Czech Republic and Lithuania shows that in extraordinary situations it may be very difficult to balance strong executive powers against legislative powers and the judiciary. The major problem is how to effectively fight significant threats to public health in a manner that does not damage the basic principles of human rights and freedoms. 45 Pranevičienė, B. and Ruibytė, L. Problems of the Implementation of the Principles of Legitimate Expectations, Legal Certainty and Legal Safety in the Sphere of Higher Education Baltic Journal of Law & Politics 2, no. 2 (2010): pp. 56–73. The principle of legitimate expectations is close to the principle of legal certainty, which has to guarantee citizens’ ability to be certain about actions of the state that may affect them and be able to act according to the situation. Legal certainty and legitimate expectations are connected values that have to generally guarantee the needs of safety and predictability.

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