The constitutional complaint is a relatively new instrument in Belarus’ legal system. «It appeared in connection with the updating of the fundamental law. It began to be put into practice on 1 October 2023. Over three years, 265 constitutional complaints have been received by the Constitutional Court. Moreover, we see an annual increase in the number of citizens’ appeals directly to the Constitutional Court. In general, it is a very innovative and progressive legal instrument that allows citizens to apply directly to the Constitutional Court when they need to verify a law that was applied in a particular court case involving that citizen and that, in the citizen’s opinion, has certain defects, namely constitutional conflicts, gaps, or legal uncertainty, that could in one way or another have affected the lawfulness of a court decision handed down by courts of general jurisdiction,» Sergei Sivets said.

He added that a fairly large number of decisions have already been issued. «Two of these decisions concerned the recognition of a number of provisions of the law on the prevention of neglect and offenses committed by adults as inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution, as well as certain provisions of the Tax Code. Accordingly, the authorized state entities and regulators took a number of actions related to amending these legislative legal acts,» the chairman of the Constitutional Court explained.

In most cases, citizens view constitutional complaints as another way to challenge, at the level of constitutional proceedings, court verdicts that have been handed down by courts of general jurisdiction in individual legal disputes. «In these cases, the Constitutional Court does not always initiate proceedings on a received constitutional complaint, because it does not find evidence of a violation of constitutional rights and freedoms. Even so, there have been precedents where a ruling refusing to initiate proceedings on a constitutional complaint was issued, yet a judge of the Constitutional Court, while finding no violation of constitutional rights in the case at hand, went on to analyze and forecast how the legal norm or law in question might play out over time and in the medium to long term. Applying it to other legal situations involving the same law or provision, the judge concluded that a future scenario could arise entailing a violation of citizens’ constitutional rights and freedoms. In this connection, the regulator was asked to pay closer attention, during the current amendment of existing legislation, precisely to that provision of the law or to the law as a whole. This is a so-called variety of preliminary constitutional control, that is, preventive constitutional control, meaning the prevention of unfavorable legal consequences in the formation of law enforcement practice and the operation of a specific legislative act,» Sergei Sivets explained.

He also answered the question of whether delegates of the Belarusian People’s Congress have the right to propose laws for review of their compliance with the Constitution. «I assume that in the near future, such appeals may well appear, because the very algorithm for forming the Belarusian People’s Congress presupposes the involvement of virtually all social strata and groups of the population, starting from representatives of all three branches of government and representatives of local self-government bodies, including also civil society representatives. Delegates of the Belarusian People’s Congress must constantly keep their finger on the pulse and clearly identify the social demand, including with regard to the possibility of appealing to the Constitutional Court with a proposal to consider a particular draft normative legal act for its compliance with the Constitution, if there is reason to believe that it in some way restricts or violates the constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens,» Sergei Sivets noted.