Lifelong limitations to public service positions to be brought up to date
The Chancellor of Justice proposed to revise lifetime limitations to certain public service positions. According to the laws in place, people are denied access to those positions for certain acts they committed, some of which aren’t even considered a crime anymore.
The Riigikogu’s Legal Affairs Committee supported the proposal unanimously.
Current Estonian law limits access to public service positions such as judges, police and boarder guard officers, members of the prison service, forensic experts, rescue personnel, and others. These limitations are for life, and in some cases based on actions that either don’t qualify as crimes any longer, or committed when the person in question was a minor.
The Legal Affairs Committee found that current law didn’t take into account the severity of offenses, their circumstances, and also the fact that whatever an applicant had done might not represent a threat to the state or position any longer.
The provisions in the law therefore needed to make clear reference to the time during which a limitation applied based on a court sentence.
Chairwoman of the committee Heljo Pikhof (SDE) said that the limitations always needed to be necessary, well-founded, and proportional, and that they needed to take into account everybody’s constitutional right to freely choose an area of activity, a profession, and a job.
Editor: Editor: Dario Cavegn