Emergency and derogation

The grounds are closed

A state of emergency may be declared only upon a natural disaster, an epidemic, a failure of an essential system, or a comparable event endangering the life or health of the population that the ordinary powers cannot meet. Article 279(7) then lists what can never be a ground: a strike, an assembly, an occupation, a political demand, an electoral result, an economic difficulty, a shortage arising from the plan, or the conduct of an association. Every historic emergency in the Republic that later embarrassed it would fail that list.

The clock

The Coordinating Bureau declares, and publication starts a seven-day fuse. Confirmation needs two thirds of the members of the Assembly together with a fresh finding by the Constitutional Court that the grounds exist, delivered within seventy-two hours, and a confirmed emergency then runs for thirty days. Renewal repeats all three steps. Article 280 caps the total at six months in any period of twenty-four, after which every measure lapses by operation of law and the same danger may found no fresh declaration in the same window.

The powers are a closed list too

Article 281(1) permits restriction of movement, restriction of the use of premises and of indoor gatherings, requisition against compensation in provision, direction of the resources of the plan, suspension of administrative time limits, and a narrow restriction of assembly. Each measure has to state the danger, the territory, the persons, the period, and why a lesser measure would fail. Assembly may be restricted only where gathering itself spreads the danger, and in no case by reference to purpose, organisers or opinions.

What no emergency reaches

Article 42(2) protects a list of rights from derogation in any circumstances, and Article 281(4) adds the institutional half: no dissolution of the Assembly, of a council or of an assembly of residents, no suspension of the courts or of the Constitutional Court, no interference with the oversight offices, no censorship or closure of a media organisation, no interruption of the network, no indiscriminate surveillance, no reduction of essential provision, and no alteration of the ecological budgets. Article 306 prohibits amendment of the Constitution during an emergency, which closes the obvious route around all of it.

Measures are always watched

Every measure is reviewable by the Constitutional Court at the instance of any person, free and within seven days, and the review reaches the existence of the danger as well as the necessity, proportion, territory and duration of the measure. The Defender of Rights publishes findings at intervals of no more than seven days. The Assembly may revoke the emergency at any time by a simple majority, which is a lower bar than the two thirds needed to confirm it. Within ninety days of the end, the Assembly examines its own conduct in public sitting upon the reports of the Court, the Defender and the Audit Office.

Ecological emergency is a separate thing

The ecological emergency of Article 36 is declared by the Ecological Budget Authority and governed by Title II. Article 283 keeps the two apart: they may run at the same time, neither enlarges the powers of the other, and a state of emergency under Title X may in no case suspend or override a measure taken under Article 36.