The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia has reviewed constitutionality of decrees adopted by the Government on the basis of Communicable Diseases Act (Official Bulletin of the RS, no. 33/06), by which the Government regulated the method of determining compliance with the “PCT” (sick, vaccinated, tested) requirement in relation to the COVID-19 disease, and held a decision (no. U-I-180/21, dated April 14, 2022) that government decrees related to the method of determining compliance with the “PCT” requirement, that includes processing of personal data, are unconstitutional.
In accordance with the Article 38 (2) of the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia, the collection, processing, designated use, supervision and protection of the confidentiality of personal data, even in an epidemiological situation, could be provided only by an act of law.
According to the Constitutional Court, the provisions of the Communicable Diseases Act, which were the legal basis for the adoption of the contested decrees, do not contain these conditions. Accordingly, two of the Government’s decrees, which were still in force at the time of decision-making, on the method of determining compliance with the PCT requirement in relation to the infectious disease COVID-19 are unconstitutional, namely incompatible with the Article 38(2) of the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia and thus, the Constitutional Court annulled them.
Since the immediate effect of the annulment would prevent the Government, as the executive branch, to fulfil its positive constitutional obligations to protect people`s health and life, the Constitutional Court decided that the annulment would come into effect one year after the publication of the decision. It thus enabled the Government to adopt, within that period, the contested regulation on the basis of the legal provisions and in accordance with the requirements from the cited decision.
