Constitutional Court
9 June 2011
Facts
The Vilnius Regional Administrative Court asked the Court to examine whether the provisions of the Law on the Real Estate Register, insofar as they do not stipulate that lawyers, upon submitting a reasoned request, have the right to obtain copies of the documents on the basis of which immovable objects, rights to them, restrictions on these rights, legal facts have been registered in the Real Estate Register, whether the Regulations of the Register of Real Estate approved by the Government, in so far as, according to the applicant, they define the classes of recipients of data with relevant restrictions on access to information, are compatible with the Constitution and with the law.
Complaint
According to the applicant, the contested legal regulation refusing to provide lawyers with copies of the documents contained in the Real Estate Register unreasonably hampers the ability of lawyers to provide effective legal assistance and discriminates against them in relation to other entities belonging to the same class of data recipients.
Court‘s ruling
The Court noted that the Constitution imposes an obligation on the legislator to establish a legal framework to ensure the inviolability of a person's private life when providing information held by state and municipal authorities.
The ruling states that the right of a person to have access to a lawyer is one of the conditions for the effective exercise of a person's right to a judicial remedy. These constitutional rights imply that the legislator is obliged to establish a legal framework which would enable a person to have access to legal assistance provided by a lawyer in order to defend their rights and legitimate interests in a court of law, and to provide for the rights of lawyers to enable them to exercise their professional activities and to provide effective legal assistance.
It was noted that the legal framework for the provision of information held by state and municipal authorities to lawyers could not be established in such a way that it would lead to a violation of the values protected by the Constitution, including the inviolability of a person's private life. Lawyers must protect the information entrusted to them for the purpose of providing legal assistance and must not disclose it, nor use the information obtained for purposes contrary to the law, and there must be provision for the liability of lawyers, including for the unlawful use of the information obtained.
The Court held that the Law does not provide that lawyers may obtain information contained in the Register necessary for the effective exercise of a person's right to legal defence by submitting a reasoned request and substantiating the relevance of the requested information to the provision of specific legal assistance to the person concerned, thus that creates conditions for violation of the requirements of the Constitution to ensure the effective exercise of a person's right to defence, as well as of the right to have access to a lawyer, and of the imperative of proportionality arising from the constitutional principle of the rule of law, according to which a person's rights must not be restricted beyond what is necessary for the attainment of the constitutionally justified objective. In this light, the Court held that the provision of the Law are contrary to the Constitution and the constitutional principle of rule of law.
In assessing the compatibility of the provisions of the Government’s legal act with the Constitution, the Court noted that they establish classes of data recipients, to which data recipients are provided with a different scope of information contained in the Register; thus, persons belonging to the second and third classes of data recipients are subject to a certain restriction of the receipt of the said information. According to the Law, the provision of data may be restricted by law, but no such restrictions in law exist. Consequently, while the Regulation of the Real Estate Register establishes three classes of recipients of data, the restriction to certain groups of persons is only imposed by a sub-legislative legal act. Thus, the Court held that certain provisions of the provisions of the Government’s legal act are contrary to the Constitution and the constitutional principle of the rule of law.