Tiago Petinga/Lusa
Judge counselor also disagreed with the decision of the majority of this Friday, which led Marcelo to veto the diploma minutes later. But law returns to air in September and government wants to fick over TC.
The Vice-President of the Constitutional Court (TC) criticized this Friday the declaration of the Law of Foreigners, considering that the measures of the decree are “perfectly reasonable”, and suggested that the decision was based on Personal convictions.
Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro and the advisor, José António Teles Pereira, say they have disagreed with the decision. Despite some of the norms contained in the decree “being controversial and debatable,” they are “perfectly reasonable and legitimate,” it is “a normal expression of democratic arbitration of political dissent,” they admit.
“Legislation in a constitutional democracy should not be a product of a transaction between the political preferences of the parliamentary majority and the majority of the members of the constitutional jurisdiction, but an exercise in programmatic freedom limited by respect for fundamental rights and structuring principles of a republic of free and equal people,” they argue.
Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro and José António Teles Pereira consider that, “for a constitutional judgment informed by such abstract and elastic values to be an example of legal reason, rather than a ideological choicemust satisfy a demanding burden of reasons, ”considering that this was not the arguments of the judgment released this Friday.
The two recognize that the legislator’s options regarding the right of foreigners must “deserve a severe scrutiny or intensified control by the constitutional judge” – “only that Intense judicial scrutiny cannot be a pretext for judges to carry to the constitutional plan the convictions they legitimately have as citizens – violating democratic equality“.
Like Gonçalo Almeida Ribeiro and José António Teles Pereira, Judge Maria Benedita Urbano also disagreed with the decision of the majority regarding the declaration of unconstitutionality of the five standards.
“Just live in Portugal and be careful and, more than that, feel the reality around us to make sure that the catastrophic situation we present in our country does not enter the category of fake news,” the judge announced.
Government willing to “adjust the route, but destination will be the same”
The Foreign Law returns to the Assembly of the Republic (AR) in September and the government has already stressed that the legislation needs to be changed and that it will not give up.
“We can adjust the route, but the destination will be the same: a more regulated immigration in Portugal“The Ministry of Presidency said in social networks.
“Let’s adjust the diplomas, but that this is clear: to fulfill the same goal (…) Portugal needs and will have more regulated immigration,” announces António Leitão Amaro.
It arrives, by the voice of André Ventura, any retreat and defended urgency in the entry into force of the law.
Still on the right, IL criticized for Mariana Leitão’s voice the “rush” of the government to change the regime.
“Family regrouping is a legal instrument in immigration policy that must be regulated based on criteria of legality, proportionality and respect for human dignity,” the new party leader in the X.
“The hurry with which the government sought to change this regime, ignoring the constitutional and legal procedures, without listening, without considering and ignoring all the alerts, led to the approval of norms that now the Constitutional Court has declared unconstitutional,” he said.
On the left, the “Replacement of constitutionality”as Pedro Delgado Alves, from PS.
For free, the decision was clear. “The government wanted to change the law of immigration to haste, without listening to anyone and running over basic constitutional principles and human rights. This lead is a victory for decency in this country ”, Paulo Muacho.
Fabian Figueiredo, from the block, denounces the “ Law of Ventura/Montenegro Cruel and undemocratic.
“Now, it fell out of unconstitutionality. It did not solve anything, only multiplied suffering and problems. Reagripping families is essential for integration, separating them is inhuman. A victory of justice against cruelty,” the former deputy.
