Top Baltic judges to discuss challenges to democracy, independence in Vilnius

VILNIUS - The presidents and justices of the Constitutional Courts of Lithuania and Latvia and the Supreme Court of Estonia are meeting in Vilnius to discuss challenges to democracy and independence.

Danute Jociene, president of the Constitutional Court of Lithuania, says the topic of this trilateral meeting is particularly important in the context of the ongoing European events as the independent and sovereign state of Ukraine has been under Russia's attack for more than 100 days.

It was hard to imagine that, in the XXI century, the fundamental constitutional values of democracy, the rule of law and human rights would have to be defended with guns, she said, adding that "constitutional courts must remain a firm guarantor of these values in any situation, while at the same time reinforcing states' independence and territorial integrity", Jociene said.

She also thanked her Estonian and Latvian counterparts for the joint initiative to exclude the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and the Constitutional Court of Belarus from the Conference of European Constitutional Courts, the Lithuanian Constitutional Court said.

The Lithuanian and Latvian Constitutional Courts started cooperating in 1996, and the first trilateral meeting of justices was held in Riga in 2019.