Today the Constitutional Court of Latvia declared unconstitutional number of provisions of a Latvian law regulating public demonstrations and pickets. All these provisions were declared incompatible with the Latvian Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights.

Thus the Constitutions Court instructed the legislature to amend existing law on pubic demonstrations and pickets.

The decision means that from now on there will not be a need for obtaining permission from municipality for public demonstration and pickets and the organisers of such demonstrations will only have to inform the municipality about their plan.

Nevertheless the Constitutional Court has agreed that there might be some restrictions which must be carefully and proportionally identified.

As many of you know the first Pride march in July 2005 was banned but successfully challenged at the administrative court. The second pride march in July 2006 was banned and the administrative court upheld the decision of the Rica City Council to ban the march. The organisers of the second Pride in Latvia challenged this decision and the appeal hearing will take place in March 2007.

The third Pride march in Riga is scheduled for 2 June 2007.

I will provide full translation of the Latvian Constitutional Court’s decision as soon as it appears, I just spoke to their office and they said it should be available within next few weeks.

Juris Lavrikovs