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The Conference of European Constitutional Courts (CECC) is an international organisation that brings together European constitutional courts and aims to advance shared values of democracy, the rule of law and the protection of fundamental rights. Every three years, the presiding constitutional court organises a pan-European congress to discuss fundamental doctrinal and conceptual issues.

When the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic handed over the CECC presidency to its Moldovan counterpart in 2021, it was at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and just a year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Both events presented European constitutional justice with new challenges and triggered the need to reflect on existing approaches to the legal and value framework on a pan-European scale. The first opportunity to analyse fully these changes was the gathering of the 36 top-level European courts in Chisinau, Moldova.

The just-concluded XIXth CECC Congress therefore addressed the overlap and points of contact of national and supranational normative systems, the relationship between law and politics, but also the protection of constitutionality in crisis situations. One of the main speakers was the President of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, Josef Baxa, who talked about the problem of deciding sensitive and ethically challenging social issues. He pointed out that constitutional courts cannot renounce their responsibility to protect fundamental rights and values just because the legislator has failed to regulate certain social issues.

The second achievement, which proves the confidence in the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, is the success of the proposal to have it act as the Permanent Office of the organisation and to keep a record of the decisions taken at all CECC congresses to date. The Circle of Presidents - i.e. the executive (decision-making) body of the organisation, consisting of the presidents of the member European courts - approved the proposal and the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic can thus use its rich organisational experience to assist the constitutional courts that will preside over the CECC in the future.

The Constitutional Courts of Russian Federation and of Belarus are no longer members of this organisation. Perhaps that is why the participants of the XIXth Congress agreed on the need for further continuation of international judicial cooperation at the highest level, linking the decision-making activity of constitutional courts with the decision-making activity of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights and - most importantly - also agreed on the consistent protection of those constitutional and democratic values that are common to European countries.

Vlastimil Göttinger
Secretary General

The President of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, Josef Baxa, was welcomed in Chisinau by the President of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Moldova, Domnica Manole