Last news regarding language litigation in Estonia
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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 09:17:08 +0200 (EET)
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Subject: Last news regarding language litigation in Estonia
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Andrei Arjupin <[email protected]>
Last news regarding language litigation in Estonia
As we mentioned earlier there are lawsuits in the Estonian
administrative court against two deputies of the local governments on
accusation for inappropriate knowledge of the state language. The
Department of State Language and the National Election Committee
initiated both cases. In spite of the fact that both cases were
grounded on the same legal basis, the results were not similar. First
deputy has lost case in the last instance - National Court; the
decision relating the other was more positive, it means that the
deputy keeps his seat in the municipal council.
It is nesessary to note that in the latter case the positive decision
was made already in the court of first instance. The court has found
that legislation currently in force delegates to the Government of the
Republic the right to identify the level of language proficiency of
the representatives of legislative power. It has also mentioned that
in the case of a municipal council, language requirements have to be
established only by the Local Governments Election Act. According to
the court`s opinion, the claim is about violations of the
constitutional right to participate in the elections in this case.
Taking into consideration aforementioned, court had rejected the claim
of the National Election Commitee and proposed to the National Court
to declare unconstitutional a number of Estonian legal acts. The
National Court has confirmed the decision of the court of first
instance.
However, the National Court, which perfoms the functions of
constitutional review, did not question the language requirements as
such. There is stance that when the Parliament of the Republic will
amend the election acts by the detailed set of language requirements,
the National Court would have no objections. The given position might
be confirmed by the negative decision of the National Court regarding
the second deputy. In this case, the courts of first and second
instance had established that the person in question has no knowledge
of Estonian. Thus, the deputy violated the Article 3.3 of the Local
Governments Election Act, which obliges a deputy to be proficient in
oral and written Estonian. As a result, the National Court (highest
level in the Estonian court system) rejected the appeal of this
deputy.
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