The institutional framework for the legal removal of privacy needs to be improved, he stresses in an article on Protagon.gr. minister of state George Herapetritis. “In a reasonable balance between protecting the rights of citizens and effectively supporting national security,” he adds, while noting that political offsets are not allowed.

An entire Secretary of State article that sounds like response to a previous presentation by Evangelos Venizelos on this issuein the following way:

“In a text published by Professor Evangelos Venizelos, he called unconstitutional the deprivation of privacy of Nikos Androulakis’ mobile phone, which was done by the National Intelligence Service for national security reasons. For complete understanding, I point out that Mr. Venizelos did not call the connection illegal because the established procedure was not followed or because in this case the basic conditions of national security were not met. He referred to the fact that the Constitution prohibits the control of parliamentarians and MEPs in general and in general for any reason. Thus, the discussion of (necessary) additional guarantees beyond the approval of the prosecutor and the control of the competent constitutional body is excluded. If something is not allowed at all, no safety net can legalize an unconstitutional act. But let’s separate the debate from its political features and turn only to the techno-legal ones.

Mr. Venizelos bases his argument on the universal exemption of MEPs (and by extension MEPs in connection with the Union clause of Article 343 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union in conjunction with Article 9 of Protocol 7) on a combination of two constitutional provisions.

First provision: A Member of Parliament is not required to testify in relation to information obtained in the performance of his duties (Article 61, paragraph 3).

Second provision: The law defines guarantees under which the judiciary is not obliged to keep secrets for reasons of national security (Article 19, paragraph 1). From my point of view, there are logical and interpretive errors inherent in the reasoning, which make the conclusion untenable.

First, there is an interpretive leap from exempting deputies from the obligation to testify to fully exempting them from legal declassification. The connection between them is completely arbitrary: exemption from the obligation to testify is a subjective/personal right of limited scope and, in its grammatical formulation, concerns only testifying. Extending it to understand any privacy removal goes beyond any notion of causation. And, furthermore, while the Constitution wants the defense against testimony to apply only to information that came to him or was given to him in the performance of his duties, that is, in the context of his political and public activities, in the opinion of Mr. Venizelos himself, with by unnecessary expansion, we would achieve an absolute sealing of any information that the Constitution did not want to protect.

Second, there is an interpretative leap to completely ban the declassification of an entire class of citizens for reasons of national security. Article 19, paragraph 1, which of course refers to the abolition of confidentiality over any other provision, does not allow the law to exclude subjects, but only establishes “guarantees” whereby the judiciary is not bound by confidentiality. These guarantees may be categorized (for example, providing additional guarantees for civil servants), but may not give rise to an outright exemption. This would be contrary to the letter of the Constitution and would constitute a departure from the principle of equal treatment without a constitutional basis, granting unjustified privileges in relation to other citizens.

Third, there is an implicit assumption that a member of parliament or MEP, by definition, cannot act to the detriment of national security, and therefore the teleology of the constitutional provision to remove secrecy is not respected. I believe that such thinking cannot possibly pass the constitutional test. Not only because it would substantially undermine the beneficial effect of removing secrecy, but mainly because the privileges granted by the Constitution to civilian personnel are not extended at will to provide ever-open protection. Just the opposite is true. Exceptions to generally applicable constitutional rules, especially in favor of representatives of the executive and legislative branches, should be interpreted narrowly. This is not only a principle of constitutional interpretation, but also a legal and political necessity. Otherwise, a space of absolute lack of accountability and responsibility is created. And, as, unfortunately, the practice of the recent past has shown, the status of a deputy does not necessarily mean faith in democracy and institutions.

Fourth, there is also the recognition that the legal question of whether MEPs enjoy absolute confidentiality under all circumstances first came up today. Two constitutional provisions on disclosure of secrecy and protection of members of parliament from testimony have been in place since 1975. resolved it, as always happens with any constitutional ambiguity. However, Executive Law 2225/1994 explicitly provides in article 3 for guarantees for the abolition of confidentiality of communications, without any exception for any category of citizens. This law, signed by Mr. Venizelos as co-ruler, is in force in much the same content to this day. And, of course, he doesn’t say anything in his memo about extending MP protection beyond non-binding testimony. If, as Mr. Venizelos contends, secrecy against a Member of Parliament is unlawful, since he is generally under natural protection, it is doubtful that this exception was not mentioned in the law and in its draft.

The legal framework for deprivalization should be improved, following the best practices of foreign jurisdictions. In a reasonable balance between protecting the rights of citizens and effectively supporting national security. This complex equation requires a creative and pure spirit. And by no means political compensation and Procrustean consideration of the Constitution.”