VILNIUS, Apr 01, BNS – Urgent decisions on the coronavirus crisis should not pose threat to the Constitution, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda says.

"It’s more important than ever to make sure our urgent decisions do not undermine our Constitution as crises come and go, and some bad habits or tendencies might stay longer," the president told journalists outside the Health Ministry of Wednesday morning.

"Today, we see efforts in some European countries as well to take advantage of the crisis to get more powers, and it's completely unclear what these powers will be used for in the future. These are dangerous tendencies, and it has already attracted attention of the European Union," he said.

In his words, all laws that are being adopted now "will have to go through the presidential office's filter in terms of human rights and also their compliance with the Constitution". The president also added that he would have vetoed some of the bills the parliament had planned to adopt on Tuesday.

"To tell the truth, several laws were not adopted yesterday and I would have probably vetoed them. (…) The Law on Civil Protection and the changes of the Criminal Code," he added.

The president's comments were related to the recently proposed changes to the existing law to give government institutions the right to receive electronic data on people's movement; the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, increasing prison terms for the spread of diseases, and also the proposed changes to the Law on Civil Protection, giving the government the right to regulate prices of goods and restrict access to goods or services during quarantine time.

By Ramūnas Jakubauskas

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