Konstituciniai vietos savivaldos pagrindai

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Konstitucija; Konstituciniai pagrindai; Konstitucinis teismas; Lietuvos Respublikos konstitucija 1992m; Savivaldos teisė; Vietos savivalda; Constitution; Constitution of Lithuania 1992; Constitutional Court; Constitutional fundations; Law of local self-government; Local self-government.

ENThe genesis of the legal status of municipalities should, first of all, be evident in the system of constitutional law. The Constitution should be taken as the source of the derivation of a certain guarantee providing municipalities with the constitutionally secured untypical initiative (responsible creative improvisation) that does not deny the provisions of the Constitution or laws. The principle of the free and independent activity of municipalities “within their competence defined by the Constitution and laws”, as consolidated in the Constitution of Lithuania, does not cause municipalities and their councils to be merely the ordinary subjects of administrative legal relations that, like all state public administration subjects, must, purportedly, act only “on the grounds provided for by law”. The actual or real Constitution in terms of local self-government cannot be duly disclosed without analysing the model (specifying in more detail the given self-government) opted for by the legislature. The legislature creates the juridical subjectivity of such a concrete territorial community that, on the grounds of the law, acquires and, in part on its own responsibility, implements the right to territorial self-government. In the rulings and decisions adopted by the Constitutional Court during 1993–2014, various aspects pertaining to the legal status of municipalities were considered, including: the procedure for the establishment of new municipalities; the fundamental elements in establishing the functions of municipalities and financing the performance of these functions; the scope of the exclusive competence of municipal councils; the system of the executive bodies of municipal councils and their accountability to municipal councils.The recent issues of concern in connection with the implementation of local self-government have included the question of a concrete (minimum) share of the resident income tax that should, based on the law, be a source of municipal income (budget funds), as well as the question of whether the competition of economic subjects can be ensured where, in certain situations (in assigning enterprises to carry out certain economic activity), municipalities give priority to the enterprises established and controlled by these municipalities themselves (e.g., in the area of passenger transportation). These issues will be determining (inspiring) the further development of the official constitutional doctrine. Although the concept of the constitutional foundations of local-self-government constitutes one of the most ample topics developed from various aspects in the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, nonetheless, numerous aspects in relation to municipal activity regulated by law (e.g., lists of objects of local levies or the procedure for imposing such levies in certain municipalities, the procedure for issuing construction permits), which are considered in the jurisprudence of administrative courts and courts of general jurisdiction, have not been a matter of constitutional review so far. [From the publication]